The Fruit of the Spirit: Faithfulness - Audio
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We're continuing our series, "Delicious, the Fruit of the Spirit" today, and as we've been singing, what we're going to be focusing on is faithfulness. And if you've been with us any length of time, you know that the biblical word for faithfulness in Hebrew is "hesed." And "hesed" is like commitment. It's relentless commitment. Sometimes it gets translated as faithful or steadfast love, sometimes mercy. But what it really gets to is like, "Never quit. Never go back." And so today I was like, "What are we going to do? How can we best approach this?" And I was workshopping with Doug on Tuesday, and he said, "Hey, why don't we talk about the guy who's considered the most faithful person in the Bible, Abraham?" And maybe even the part of his life that was the ultimate test of faithfulness. I thought it was an amazing idea. And so today we're going to jump into Genesis 22. So Marilyn, if we get Genesis 22 up, then God said, "Take your son, your only son whom you love Isaac, and go to the region of Moriah." Moriah, we're not exactly sure where that is, but the tradition, the Jewish tradition, and the Christian tradition is that it's actually Jerusalem. And there's some reasons for thinking that because of the word itself. And if you went to Jerusalem today and you saw the dome of the rock, where it's a holy spot for Muslims, right underneath it is the place where the tradition says that all of this stuff happened. And so if you're thinking about what's going on, Abraham and Isaac are going to be climbing up the temple mount, what's not a temple yet, but the mountain where the temple will be for this to take place, then God says, "Sacrifice him Isaac. There is a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you." Early the next morning, Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey. While I and the boy go over there, we will worship and then we will come back to you." The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from... That's not right. That's later. Wait, I must have... Did I... There we go. When they reached the place God had told them 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. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven. "Abraham, Abraham, here I am," he replied. "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." Next. There we go. 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 him to this day to set on the mountain of the Lord, on the mountain of Yahweh. It will be provided. And it ends this way. The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, "I swear by myself declares Yahweh that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed because you have obeyed me." Now this text is so rich. We could do a whole series on just this text because there's so much going on. Unfortunately for us we're just going to be focusing on the bit about faithfulness. Because I think what's happening in this text is there's three characters, right? There's Isaac. There's his father Abraham and there's Yahweh God. And in their own way and it's kind of interrelated. They are all demonstrating radical commitment. They're demonstrating what faithfulness is to each other and then for Isaac and Abraham to God. And so I think it will be helpful to focus on each of the characters in terms. So let's look at Isaac first. The boy, the Greek there, the Hebrew there is nahr and it's a little bit ambiguous. Nahr can mean anything from like maybe six years old up to about like 18. It gets used in that way throughout scripture. And so we're not sure how old Isaac is at this point. We do know that Abraham was 75 years old when Isaac was born. So it's very likely that Abraham's in his 80s or 90s when this is taking
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Biblical faithfulness: obedience even when it makes no sense; trust even when it makes no sense; keeping your promise of blessing.