上周日是教会的英国长老讲道， 轮到我翻译。 为了准备， 周六晚上我静静地重读了创世纪中记叙的亚伯拉罕的一生经历， 在创世纪 12 章至 25 章。 长老说的对， 每次最有收获的是讲道和翻译的人， 因为在准备过程中， 可以有很多思考， 想到很多平时没深想过的问题。
这次讲的是 22 章上帝考验亚伯拉罕的故事， 圣经中最著名又令人疑惑不解的故事之一。
这个故事里似乎有个谬误， paradox, 一个似非而是 ( 不是似是而非 ) 的谬误。神命亚伯拉罕在把儿子以撒杀了在摩利亚山上献祭，似乎是使亚伯拉罕家面临断绝后代的危险。 而上帝曾给他祝福说的是神必让他成为伟大民族，万国都因他的后裔得福。两者明显有矛盾：没有了以撒， 怎有众多后裔。
不管怎样，亚伯拉罕和以撒及仆人行走三天到达指定地点，亚伯拉罕和以撒都完全顺服了神的命令。
就在亚伯拉罕举刀向爱子以撒之时，神派天使拦阻了他，要他用附近神提供的公羊代替以撒来献牺牲祭。
亚伯拉罕的信心和顺从命令是否盲目呢， 不是。 因为亚伯拉罕从神已得不少祝福，包括让他不孕的妻子高龄生下儿子，包括从埃及救他全家出来， 给他应许之地， 等等。 他信赖上帝，是那位一直祝福带领他的上帝。 所以他信赖，顺从。
这个故事很让人惊心动魄，因为亚伯拉罕和以撒都不知道上帝关键时会来挽救以撒一条命。
仔细想想：当亚伯拉罕举刀向爱子以撒之时， 神给他们预备了出路，救了以撒， 可当耶稣在被罪人钉在十字架上之前， 求问父亲这苦杯是否能撤去之时， 上帝并没有救他的爱子不受死亡之苦。
亚伯拉罕没有把儿子留下不给上帝， 显示了他对上帝的信心极大， 而上帝自己没有把独子耶稣留下不给我们世人，显示了他对世人的爱心极深。
我在想，这样的给出，在亚伯拉罕， 是把神当神，而在神，几乎可说是把世人的利益和需要当神。 上帝通过耶稣做成的这个救恩计划的道理实在深奥。 亚伯拉罕是神所喜悦之人，他通过这件事体验到了上帝舍弃爱子的痛苦，也是他与神同行经历的一部分。
当我们亲身经历神对我们生命的信实，信心就会增加，顺服神的旨意的愿望就会更为强烈。每次经历上帝的试验之时， 就能有信心力量通过试炼，向自己向别人证明自己的信心。
好消息是， 圣经已说过， 上帝不会给我们的试练难过我们所能承受的。他总会为我们预备一条路。 这试炼 更不会难于他自己承受的：献出自己独子生命给人，或像亚伯拉罕那样献出唯一爱子以撒这样的试炼。
但是神要给我们各样的试验， 至少牺牲些小的东西：个人的舒适，金钱， 时间。。。
也许可以说，若要看我们对上帝的信心如何， 就看我们在生命的路上，能不能通过上帝给的一个个信心的试炼。
可能由于我在翻译前默默祷告，求神让我能集中精力，准确记住长老所说每一句话，并迅速译出恰当的中文，做一个忠实的信息传递者，这次翻译的效果还让人满意。
次日凌晨，起床时感觉有些心痛，也许是想到亚伯拉罕在那三日所经历的内心挣扎，想到以撒在明白自己就是牺牲的那一时刻所经历的情绪波动，想到在被钉上十架之前耶稣也经历过的内心痛苦挣扎。。。
也许上帝不光磨练我们甘心顺服的品格，还让我们拥有一颗懂得怜悯懂得体会别人痛苦的心。
最重要的是不要忘记这个故事里的结局， 上帝的做为：那就是亚伯拉罕说的：“在耶和华的山上必有预备”。还有最后耶和华所说：“ 你既行了这事， 不留下你的儿子， 就是你独生的儿子，我便指着自己起誓说：论福， 我必赐大福给你， 论子孙， 我必叫你的子孙多起来，如同天上的星星，海边的沙。你子孙必得着仇敌的城门，并且地上万国都必因你的后裔得福， 因为你听从了我的话。”
长老的讲道大纲： Trusting God
David Bottright
The story of Abraham and Isaac is one of the most familiar stories in the Bible. It is so well known that I am sure most of us who know it well have forgotten how strange and unsettling it really is. It is such an intriguing story that we are willing to overlook some of the disturbing details. But the details are very important. Why does God need to test Abraham? Surely he knows that Abraham is a good, obedient man? More importantly, how can God ask Abraham to murder his own child? How can Abraham be praised for having such blind faith?
Let's examine this passage with these questions in our minds. Read Genesis 22. 1-19
The first thing that we learn from this passage is in verse 1. God is testing Abraham. This is the first time that testing is mentioned in the Bible. The passage doesn't immediately make it clear what God is testing, but we do know that what follows is a test, and it is a test from God. We can't pretend that the command to sacrifice Isaac is from the Devil and the provision of the ram is from God. Right from the very beginning of God's dealings with people, God is seen to test.
So, what does the test involve? God calls Abraham to travel to a mountain specified by God. Now,
• This is the man who trusted God enough to leave his home and family but not enough to admit that Sarai was his wife when they went into Egypt.
• This is the man who trusted God He said “I will make of you a great nation” but not enough to believe that Sarai could conceive at 90 years old.
Now, Abraham is a great man, a patriarch of the Jewish nation but he is not perfect. We have to wait for Jesus to achieve that. But Abraham must have thought to himself, after all that he had been through, "Now the worst is over. Now I will live in peace. Ishmael is gone. Hagar is gone. Lot is gone. But I have Sarah and Isaac. All is well." But it was not so.
He is to sacrifice his only son Isaac as a burnt offering. This means that he must bind his son, kill him with a knife and burn his body to ashes. This is a terrible prospect for any father, but it must have been especially harrowing for Abraham who had been childless for over 100 years, and was given this child by a miracle. Furthermore, Abraham would have to endure a testing journey of three days, during which his resolve to do what God had asked would have been tried to the limit. This was not an act of faith in God that could be exercised in the heat of the moment. Abraham would have endured the temptation to disobey God for hours and days.
So Abraham's test was long and torturous. But why did God need to test Abraham in the first place? In Genesis 15:6 we have already seen that Abraham believed God and was counted righteous. So why the test? Look at verse 12. This is another strange verse that has confused many people over the years. Through his angel, God calls out and tells Abraham not to kill Isaac. He says to Abraham, "Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." Does this verse mean that God has learned something that he didn't know before? That's what some people conclude, but this is not the point of this verse. This verse suggests to us God's reason for testing Abraham, and for testing all his people. He tests us so that our faith can be proved genuine. The only way that people can be shown to trust God completely is if they are put in situations where they have opportunity to trust God, or trust themselves and disobey God. If God did not test Abraham, Abraham's faithfulness would never have been known to him, or to us.
So, God tested Abraham to reveal Abraham's obedience. But why such a gruesome test? Surely God would never ask for human sacrifice? Child sacrifice is always seen as an abomination to God in other parts of scripture.
There is no getting around it: we can't remove the offence of this story; we can't make it easier to accept by more sensitive minds by denying God's command. "God tested Abraham." The God who sovereignty gave the son is now exercising His right to take the son back.
Martin Luther once read this Bible story for family devotions. When he had finished, Katie said, "I do not believe it. God would not have treated his son like that." "But, Katie," answered Luther, "He did." Here is a reminder that God demanded of Abraham no less than He himself was willing to do many years later when He sent His Son to die upon the cross.
It would have been tempting for Abraham to try to explain away the command. “God can’t mean to literally sacrifice my son, can he?” “Perhaps I can think of a way out.” “Maybe I misunderstood Him.” Or “I just can’t go through with this—it’s unreasonable.” Did endless doubts cloud his mind, racing with questions and wondering why? “Who is the God whom I worship? Is He really like all the other Canaanite gods who want child sacrifice? Is there any other way out?” But God’s command was unerringly clear—it couldn’t be anyone but his only-begotten son whom he loved, Isaac. And he was to be offered as a whole burnt offering on Mount Moriah. Moriah, the future site of the Temple in Jerusalem.
You could read this text a hundred times and still never understand what anguish Abraham is going through because of his faith. Because you know something Abraham doesn’t know. You know that this is a test. Abraham doesn’t know that this is just a test. He doesn’t know how this will end. You do, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know that it will end well, but he just trusts in God. It’s like that with us too. When God tests us, we never know that it’s just a test. We never know how it’s going to end. We must simply trust in God.
The servants would go no further; they would never understand what Abraham understood all too well. Abraham’s strict instructions were as follows, ‘stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.’ What a strange thing to say, ‘We will come back to you.’ What was Abraham thinking with those words? Abraham believed that if God said that Isaac would be his seed then God would raise him from the ashes. After three days, Abraham was already looking for the resurrection of the dead.
Up to this point in the journey, the donkey had carried the wood for the sacrifice. But from this point on, it would be just Abraham and his son. Abraham being well over 100 years old loads the wood for the sacrifice on the back of his son, his only son, whom he loves. And we read, ‘the two went on together.’ Isaac offers no resistance so must not have understood what kind of sacrifice this was to be. He sees the wood and the fire and the knife, everything carefully accounted for. But he sees no animal to sacrifice. And so he asks, ‘Father, where is the lamb?’
Abraham could have said, ‘You are the lamb my son, my only son, whom I love.’ But he couldn’t do it. The best he could do was to say, ‘God himself will provide the lamb.’ And again we read, ‘And the two of them went on together.’
When they came to the place, Abraham built the altar out of the stones which were plentiful in that area. And now there was nothing left to delay the telling of the truth. He had to tell Isaac.
How do you think Isaac felt about all this? Josephus, the ancient Jewish historian, tells us that Isaac was about 25 years old when the story in front of us happened. He was a strong, young man who could easily have resisted and rebelled and refused to go along. Strong, young Isaac saw the fire and the wood and asked about the "lamb for the burnt offering." It was at this point that Abraham must have told him God's command. What does Isaac do? Does he resist? Does he question? Does he turn around? No, "the two of them went on together." He helped his father build the altar and arrange the wood on it. He permitted himself to be bound and laid upon the altar by his father. Abraham raised the knife and Isaac exposed his throat as a sheep to be slaughtered. Never in history was there such obedience, except only in Christ.
It would seem that Isaac, like Abraham, passed this supreme test of faith. But this was not blind faith. Abraham heard and spoke with God; had walked with God since leaving Ur of the Chaldeas; had been rescued from Egypt by God; and given a son by God. This was no blind faith. His was a faith built on personal experience. If our faith is to be strong then it too must be built on personal experience – reading and studying His word, the Bible.
When Hudson Taylor went to China, he made the voyage on a sailing vessel. As it neared the channel between the southern Malay Peninsula and the island of Sumatra, the missionary heard an urgent knock on his stateroom door. He opened it, and there stood the captain of the ship. "Mr. Taylor," he said, "we have no wind. We are drifting toward an island where the people are heathen, and I fear they are cannibals." "What can I do?" asked Taylor. "I understand that you believe in God. I want you to pray for wind." "All right, Captain, I will, but you must set the sail." "Why that's ridiculous! There's not even the slightest breeze. Besides, the sailors will think I'm crazy." But finally, because of Taylor's insistence, he agreed. Forty- five minutes later he returned and found the missionary still on his knees. "You can stop praying now," said the captain. "We've got more wind than we know what to do with!"
Abraham's faith passed the test. What exactly did Abraham have faith in? Abraham believed that even if Isaac was killed God would still fulfill His promises that through Isaac his descendants would be a great nation who would possess the land of Canaan and eventually be the source of blessing for all peoples on earth. These promises, I want you to notice, required a living, breathing Isaac. Abraham, we would have to say, believed that God had the power, if necessary, to raise Isaac from the dead. Abraham believed in the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful God.
One night a house caught fire and a young boy was forced to flee to the roof. The father stood on the ground below with outstretched arms, calling to his son, "Jump! I'll catch you." He knew the boy had to jump to save his life. All the boy could see, however, was flame, smoke, and blackness. As can be imagined, he was afraid to leave the roof. His father kept yelling: "Jump! I will catch you." But the boy protested, "Daddy, I can't see you." The father replied, "But I can see you and that's all that matters."
Abraham trusted in God even though he couldn’t see how God’s promises could be honoured by sacrificing Isaac.
The book of Hebrews offers an inspired comment on Abraham's faith. Let’s read it together – Hebrews 11, 17-19.
‘By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.’
Abraham had faith in God's power to raise the dead. Even if Isaac died at Abraham's hand, Abraham believed God could bring him back to life.
Abraham’s faith in God to raise his son from the dead was a foreshadowing of the real thing, when God would literally offer up His own Son Jesus to death—the only sinless death that could satisfy God. Jesus was the sinless, spotless, Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus showed perfect obedience and willingness, carrying the wood of His own cross as Isaac carried the wood of sacrifice. Like Isaac wondered at where the sacrifice was, Jesus was troubled in the Garden of Gethsemane when He asked if this was really God’s will, and was there no other way? By His full consent to the Father’s will and not His own, He gave His life for us. Though He faced His own death and grave, He committed Himself wholly to God’s Word.
We all know how things worked out. God again came to Abraham. Not as the almighty, not as the all-knowing and all-seeing but as the "angel of the Lord." Stopping Abraham's knife in midair, He called out, (Gen 22:12) "Do not lay a hand on the boy ... 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."
Abraham comes through this test discovering that God provides. As a result of this test, a saying is born that became a part of Jewish culture. Look in verse 14. Abraham calls the place of the sacrifice 'The Lord Will Provide'. And the saying that comes out of this is, 'On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided'.
So, what has the Lord provided? Look at verses 9-13. Abraham is prevented from killing his son, and instead, he is directed to a ram caught in a bush, which he is told to kill in Isaac's place. While it is true that God provides everything that we have, this is not the kind of provision that the passage is talking about. Abraham discovers that in times of testing, God provides that way for us to pass through the test. He enables us to withstand our trials. This is similar to God's message to us in 1 Corinthians 10:13, where Paul says, "And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it". So, when you are tempted to disobey God and follow your own ways, remember that God is faithful and God is your provider. He will always provide a way for you to stand up under temptation.
Learn these three things:
A. Our trials always come from our heavenly Father.
B. Our trials are never more than we can bear.
C. Our trials are brought upon us by God to prove and improve our faith, a witness to ourselves and to others.
We can also be sure that we will all regularly be tested to prove this faith in some or other way.
• Your trust in God's word may be tested when things go wrong in the family, or financially.
• Your trust in God's word may be tested when the opportunity arises to gossip about or criticize someone who has wronged you.
• Your trust in God's word may be tested when you want to intervene in a problem that God is resolving.
• Your trust in God's word may be tested when you have to choose between losing face by standing up for Christ with family, friends or business colleagues, or just staying quiet.
• Sometimes testing may involve waiting patiently, having to move quickly, or having to do without. However it comes, God will send testing to prove and refine your faith.
The example of Abraham and others who remained faithful and trusted in God should encourage us to remain faithful in the midst of the trials that we face, and it helps us to run the race with perseverance. How many of us are willing to give up our children as Abraham was, not likely today. But maybe we will be called to give up some of our comfort, time and money.
How big is your faith, or how small? What are you willing to give up, if God asks? The word ‘if’ is critical here as we do not choose our tests. God does. What do we hold most dear, and is this more, or less than our trust in God.
Let me end with a story from Korea as witnessed by two wealthy Christians who joined a party that was traveling around the world.
One day, they saw, in a field by the side of the road, a boy pulling a simple plow, while an old man held the plow handles and directed it. The lawyer was amused, and took a snap shot of the scene. "That's a curious picture! I suppose they are very poor," he said to the missionary, who was interpreter and guide to the party. "Yes," was the reply. "That is the family of Chi Noui. When the church was being built they were eager to give something to it, but they had no money; so they sold their only ox and gave their money to the church. This spring they are pulling the plow themselves."
The lawyer and the business man by his side were silent for some moments. Then the business man said, "That must have been a real sacrifice." "They did not call it that," said the missionary. "They thought that it was fortunate that they had an ox to sell."
God gives us all we have. Like Abraham, these people were willing to surrender anything and everything for the Lord. Are we?
