Will we pass the test? That is the burning question in my heart, blazing to its most searing after the recent events at the White House but sparking with the unrest of the last two years.
And yes, without a doubt, God is a God Who Tests Us. Genesis 22 tells us specifically that God tested Abraham:
Sometime later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you. (vs. 1-2)
There’s no doubt this is a test. We are told clearly that it is a test.
For some, Genesis 22 is one of the more difficult chapters of the Old Testament. First, we in the west tend to dread tests. We are suspicious of them—and of a God who employs them. This brings God’s goodness again into question: Does a good God set us up for a test? Is that necessary? Is it fair? Do we have to?
Then, when the test itself is examined, many are ready to throw out the entire Bible (or at least the Old Testament), relegating this crazy, demented, unfair god to either mythology, manipulation, or—at worst—a sadist of a god who doesn’t deserve anything from us. Surely a good god/God would never require a parent to kill their own child! Much less a child they were promised (by this same god/God) and for whom they have waited for so long! This is pure insanity. And Abraham would have been well within his rights to question, object, fight and outright ignore the request. He’d be well-justified to question his hearing—and/or sanity.
But Abraham does none of this.
Abraham leaves the morning after God commands him to do so. He takes with him Isaac, servants, and the necessary ingredients for fire for the sacrifice. At a certain point, when they leave the servants behind and only take the wood, flint, and knife, Isaac begins to ask questions:
Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together. (vs. 7-8)
Then, Abraham faces his worst fear, his worst nightmare, and his greatest heartbreak in one dark moment:
When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
At the moment when Abraham’s heart determined to do this thing, trusting God to still keep His promise that Isaac would bear children and Abraham’s descendants would come from Isaac, it becomes obvious that only God reigns in Abraham’s heart.
After all the tests that he had previously failed, THIS time, Abraham did not fail. His heart was proven to be trustworthy: God was indeed enthroned there and no other. He trusted God absolutely. He feared God wholly. He obeyed God, regardless. And passes the test.
Then the angel of the Lord stops him just in time:
“Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”
I have long loved the Rembrandt work “Abraham’s Sacrifice.” There are several sketches showing different ways this scene might have played out (click here for two). Always, the angel is shown intervening in the point of no return, the knife falling from Abraham’s surprised hands.
The point is that at the moment when Abraham’s heart surrendered absolutely, he was transformed. All the moments and (failed) preparatory tests up until that point, brought him to this final moment, where he gloriously passes the test.
In every Christian’s life, we come to a place, like Abraham, where we must surrender everything—including what we know God has promised us and even what we know to be true about God. Every “sure” foundation of our life is surrendered to the Sure Foundation Himself.
This is the purpose of the test. As David says in Psalm 139:23-24:
Search me, God, and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
This begins to answer an important underlying question we face when looking at the interaction between God and Abraham (as well as God and our own lives): Why does God test us? The first clue to the answer is found in the knowledge that God continues to test us even after we fail them. Abraham’s life shows us this. He continues to give Abraham opportunity after opportunity to be proven...but proven as what? To what end?
The second clue to the answer is found when we examine why David asks to be tested.
David not only asks God to test him but also asks God to know him. He asks God to know his anxious thoughts, to search him to see if there are any offensive ways in David—offensive, idolatrous ways. Both Abraham and David show us the purpose of tests: to be known intimately by God and to reveal our self to ourselves, so that we may surrender to God’s leading in "the way of life".
A test reveals God. And it reveals our own idolatrous self. If we see that idolatry and respond correctly, we reach for God’s intervention. He comes and reveals Himself as THE GOD WHO Transforms Us. We lean into this revelation of who He is. Our relationship deepens. We are tested again—sometimes by God but more often just by life. This happens again and again—this revelationship—until God is enthroned in the seat of our hearts and our idolatry is wiped out.
This testing is necessary for both the revelation of who we are without Him and who He can be to us. Only a good Creator would care to have a revelationship with His creation. Indeed, it is the reason for our existence.
In the latter part of Genesis 22, we see who God can be for us. In the case of Abraham and Isaac, He showed Himself to be the God Who Provides A Sacrifice:
Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”
This, of course, is a type of Christ, who is the sacrificial lamb provided by the God Who Provides A Sacrifice. This is the significance the shepherds understood when they saw baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling strips of cloth and lying in a manger. These special shepherds were tasked with guarding not just any lambs, but the unblemished ones to be used in sacrifice—lambs wrapped in swaddling cloth to protect them.
They understood they were witnesses of the God Who Provides The Last Required Blood Sacrifice or the God Who Provides Final Atonement or the God Who Provides Himself As The Final Sacrifice. This is the long-planned, loving action of the God Who Fulfills His Promises, regardless of generations who fail.
Grace provides both the test and the power to pass the test.