Abraham Believed
Written by Ben Dismukes
There is a remarkable scripture tucked away in the biblical story of Abraham, the significance of which is easily missed if we’re not careful. “And he believed the Lord, and [the Lord] counted it to him as righteousness,” (Genesis 15:6).
It was a physical impossibility that Abraham would produce a son with his wife, who had already been through menopause. Yet hearing the word of God, faith arose in his heart. And he chose to believe God, and God considered him righteous.
If there is a consistent theme in the Bible, it is this: God repeatedly offers Himself to His people to do for them and in them what only He can do… and those who take Him at His word benefit. But belief doesn’t come cheaply. It is always contested. Openly challenged. Relentlessly assaulted against by the enemy of our souls. And since unproven belief is no more effective than unbelief, God welcomes the battle.
Belief is a function of the heart (Romans 10:10), and the heart is easily led astray when we listen to the wrong voices. Abraham demonstrated this. It’s not clear how much time elapsed between Genesis 15 and Genesis 16. Perhaps a few years. Perhaps a few weeks. What we do know is this: in Genesis 15, Abraham is “resolute” in his faith in God. But by the time the next chapter takes place, the voice of Sarai has become much more prominent than the voice of the One. And the battle for proven faith began. The man of faith – still considered righteous because of his initial choice to believe the Lord – succumbed to unbelief. In weakness, he fell into a desperate attempt to do what only God could do, and Ishmael was produced.
A few years later, Genesis 17 rolls around. By this time, Abraham is 99. Once more, God promised to open his wife’s womb and give them a son. This time the man of faith laughed out loud and suggested a more logical option for the God of Grace. “Why don’t you just consider Ishmael the heir of your choosing, Lord? It’s ok… I won’t hold you to any unfulfilled promises you made in the past. I’m content with the child I produced. Your way just wasn’t working out for us anyway.”
God shot back, “You’re not listening to the right Voice, Abraham! I said Sarah would bear you a son, and I will have an everlasting covenant with his offspring. I promised you a son, now watch Me do it!”
In the fight over true belief, Abraham was ground zero. The enemy’s sights were set against the One Voice, and a cacophony of confusion set upon the mind of the patriarch, which would prove to be the gateway to his heart. His faith, which is born in the heart, was now hanging by a thread and laid bare for all to see. It was unproven. Untested. Incapable of standing firm. It was weak-willed and wishy-washy. His choice was wavering, but God’s choice held strong.
The Almighty had set His gaze upon Abraham, and He was not about to turn away. His hand of Grace had seized the man’s heart, and He was about to flex. Instead of backing off, God doubled down. It was time to initiate covenant with the man. And though the Everlasting is incapable of violating His word, this covenant would serve as a testament, to that man and others, of His personal guarantee to watch over His word unto completeness – even in the face of absurd odds.
Such signs don’t come cheaply. Covenant requires the shedding of blood – a reminder that God’s promises, while beautiful and life-giving, are costly and painful. And the sting of the flint blade against the foreskin of Abraham was not soon forgotten, but neither was the fact that only God could do what God promises to do. And the lesson was made clear – anything that overshadows the governmental headship of the Lord must be exposed and removed.
By the time we get into Genesis 22, Abraham is a different man entirely. We’re not told how old Isaac was at this point. The historian Josephus believed he was 25; some say as old as 30. Regardless, Abraham was significantly older, and with that many more miles behind him in his journey into true faith. At this time, the God of Grace would demand that the gift become the sacrifice. And the man who once wavered, didn’t flinch. The friend of God, as James would call him many years later, was just that because of proven faith. The choice to believe in Genesis 15, had finally been tested to the nth degree.
Somewhere along the way, Abraham quit trying to help God out and simply learned to trust Him instead. Activity gave way to heart-level rest, and a beautiful friendship was born.
My friends, if the father of our faith had to endure this kind of testing, why would we not expect the same? By grace, God has awakened our hearts, knowing ahead of time that we would respond to Him. By grace, we gave our “Yes and Amen!” to his invitation, and because of the choice, He credits us with righteousness. But the story doesn’t end there. It’s merely the beginning!
It is a bride who is clothed in righteous deeds that He’s promised to produce within us. He has promised to clothe us in the Son, so that it’s no longer us who is seen, but Christ the Glorious One, living in and through us. That is the very thing we have chosen to believe Him for, but unproven faith is susceptible to the voice of Sarai. A demonic flurry rushes in upon us like a flood, through oftentimes well-meaning, but well-confused vessels, “If you want to be bridal, you’re going to have to help God out. You need to be doing more! Do you honestly think you’re progressing in your journey? Where’s the fruit?!” And the assault against simple trust in the God of Grace is initiated.
In His wisdom, God welcomes it. He knows what’s in our hearts – the doubt… the fear of yielding control… the propensity towards religious behavior… the insecurity and feelings of inadequacy that plague us… etc., and He’s simply flushing it all out into the open so that, like foreskin, it can be exposed and dealt with in finality. He understands that choices made in unproven belief will eventually give way to doubt and unbelief. He knows the Ishmaels we’ll produce along the way. He sees the very real and dangerous swings between the short-lived feeling of accomplishment as the works of our own hands provide a fleeting moment of satisfaction and the deep, dark chasm of shame and condemnation that come from realizing that, somewhere along the way, we stopped truly believing in Him. He recognizes all too easily that while double-minded people are like ships tossed about on the sea, a thread of belief remains intact for those who would go all the way, even in the midst of the flurry of religious activity. And while it may be torn, tattered and hanging on for dear life, at just the right moment, He comes to His own.
In love, He silences the voices of doubt and unbelief. He restrains the demonic assault and speaks to our hearts, reminding us of when He first spoke to them so many years before. He calls us back to the simplicity of trusting in the One Voice. And the choice before us, as He sharpens His flint knife, is as straightforward as it was the day we came up out of Egypt. We can either believe Him or reject Him. There is no middle ground.
And if we hear Him… when we hear Him… he revives the faith that can only come through the hearing of the One Voice – the faith of the Son of God. That is to say, He manifestly rises up within us, to be to us a faith that is entirely other, while simultaneously dealing a fatal blow to the self-manufactured faith in and of the flesh.
It is God, who was put on trial in the days of Abraham’s wavering, yet God remained steadfast. It was His nature that was questioned, and in the doubt and confusion of Abraham’s heart, the nature of fallen man was exposed. No one can be sure what the motives of Abraham’s heart were in his unbelief. Maybe he thought God had forgotten about him, or perhaps he felt he was just too insignificant for a One so powerful and glorious as the Lord. It doesn’t really matter. Ultimately… little, tiny, insignificant man openly questioned and distrusted the Holy One. And God had every right to lay hold of Abraham by the collar and get right up into his face and say, “Now look here, bud! I’ve been quite patient with you, but you have not lived up to your end of the bargain! I don’t have time for this anymore! I’m done with you!”
But He didn’t. The thought never even entered into His mind.
Instead, the unglorious display of grotesque foreskin was the perfect opportunity for the God of Grace to reaffirm the nature of covenant with His people. “No, Abraham… I never said for you to produce an heir. I said that I would do it for you and that I would do it through you.”
You and I are no different than Abraham. In fact, to be a true heir of Abraham – the father of the faith – it is quite inevitable that we’ll face the very same warfare. When we see evidence of self-reliance, self-strength and self-determination produce failure after failure, keep in mind that, like Abraham, we’re closer to hearing the One Voice than we’ve been in a long time. And until we do, we have no hope.
Our failure to produce the Promise of God (which is a Person – namely Christ) is foreskin on display. Once it’s out in the open, it’s time to ask for the flint knife of God and come deeper into covenantal love.
