Faith Counting on the Power of God

Xi. — 17. By faith Abraham, being tried, offered up Isaac: yea, he that had gladly received the promises was offering up his only begotten son;

18. Even he to whom it was said, In Isaac shall thy seed be called:

19. Accounting that God is able to raise up, even from the dead; from whence he did also in a parable receive him back.

As the characteristic of Abraham’s faith we have here again the great word — offering. Abel offered; Christ offered Him self; Abraham offered his only begotten, and, in doing so, himself too. In some shape or other intercourse with God, the life of faith, always means sacrifice. In a sinful world there is no way of drawing nigh to God, of coming out of the sinful nature, but by dying to it, and receiving a new life from God Himself, or rather by God giving His own life into the dead one to raise it again. There is no way to God but by giving up our own life, and what is as dear as life, unto death.

This sacrifice is only possible to faith. The faith that has seen and embraced the promise, that knows God as the living and life-giving God, and that dares claim and count upon His power to do to me what He has spoken, is the faith that has the courage for the altar and the knife arid the fire. God’s great object in leading His people in the path of faith is to train them for ever larger sacrifice. It was a sacrifice of all he

held dear when Abraham left his kindred and his father’s home. 29

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It was a sacrifice of all his own thoughts and wishes, when he was kept waiting for Isaac twenty-five years. But all this was only to prepare him for the crowning sacrifice — the giving up of his only son, the son of the promise, to the death.

And what was it that gave faith its strength and its victory here in this his severest trial? It was faith in God as the almighty One, able to raise up even from the dead. In the birth of Isaac he had learnt to know God as the giver of life, even where he was as good as dead. He knew and trusted his God, as God who quickeneth the dead and calleth the things that are not as though they were. And what is it that will give our faith the same all-victorious strength, and prepare us for the same mighty exhibition of God’s quickening power on our behalf? If we are to have the same faith, and the same experience of God, we must be prepared to make the same sacrifice. Our lesson of to-day leads us to the very deepest roots of the life of faith. The deeper we are willing to enter into the death to self, the more shall we know of the mighty power of God, and the perfect blessedness of a perfect trust.

In the faith of Sarah we saw what the meaning and the power was of faith in the living and life-giving God. But Abraham on Moriah carries us much further. Sarah trusted God to supply a power that was wanting in nature; Abraham to restore a life that had been taken away. Sarah is the type of a soul that waits on God for His quickening power, as an act of grace and faithfulness, ere it thinks much of the death of self. With her the quickening came to meet a deadness that appears simply the result of the weakness of nature. With Abraham all is different Isaac, the God-given life, must be sacrificed, ere this new display of power can be expected. That sacrifice was to teach that even the God-given life is still subject to the

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power of fallen nature; that only through death can it be delivered from the power of sin and death; that only so can it become a life wholly possessed of God. The first time quickened by Him, and yet under the power of sin; the second time, dead to sin, and alive to God in the perfect life of eternity. It was the symbol of what was to take place in Christ Jesus and everyone who is made like Him in the fellowship of His death.

We see where this leads us in the Christian life. Even as Christ in His birth received His life from the Father, so we, too, in our new birth. But that life had to be sacrificed, ere He could enter the full life in the glory of the Father. Even so with us. The life God gives us in the new birth is only to prepare us for understanding and deserving and accepting and entering into a perfect voluntary conformity to Christ’s death. As we see how much there still is of self, we begin to learn and long for what is implied in the death to self. It means a deeper insight into our own entire and complete inability to do any good. It means a willing and a hearty consent to be and to do nothing, and to let God be and do all. It means a real ceasing from our own works, and an entire surrender to the immediate and unceasing operations of God by His Holy Spirit, for Him to work both to will and to do that which is pleasing in His sight. It means such a hating of one’s own life, such a denial of one’s self, that one is content with nothing less than death to it.

It is the soul that seeks to follow its Lord in this new and living way, that feels the need of the faith in the living God who raises the dead, that will be fitted to exercise it. It is the trial of faith calls out its power; it is the need of faith calls down the power of God. Oh, if we did but hear the call of God to bring the life He has Himself given us, with all its blessed

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experience, and yield it up to the death, how we should learn to know Him in His mighty quickening power. Instead of the life with something of God, but far more of man, He who led Abraham would bring us to the place of death, where He would give us the assurance that henceforth His almighty power would do all, and we should find our blessedness in being nothing and allowing God to be our life.

Christian! Abraham offered up Isaac, accounting that God is able to raise him up, even from the dead. Take the place of death; trust God who raises the dead, and gives life in death; believe and thou shalt see the glory of God.

1. The highest manifestation of God’s power is the raising of Christ from the dead. The highest exercise of faith by Christ was in death — He committed His Spirit into the Father’s hands. The highest exercise of faith in a believer — the daily surrender of the life God has giuen us to death, in the faith that He will quicken it each moment by His indwelling Spirit.

2. Before Isaac’s birth Abraham had nothing to lean upon but the promise. After it he was in danger of leaning on Isaac: therefore, Isaac had to be given up. All gifts of God received in faith may become our trust, and must be giuen up to Him in a higher faith.

3. Our whole life every day, every moment, is to be the work of Almighty God within us by His holy Spirit.

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