Faith Sacrifices All

When I was a junior in high school, I struggled with my love for a sport that I’d devoted the whole of my high school life to – football. I grew up listening to my dad tell stories of his glory days playing the sport, so I leapt at the opportunity to play as soon as he would let me. I put in the time and effort, eating peanut butter and drinking milk so I could meet the weight goals my coach set. I worked out and ran four miles every day. But, my junior year, that passion started to wane, and my dad could tell it. I’d just started dating Leah, and so after every game, we’d go out until curfew. After one game where we’d lost by a few points, I went out with Leah and made it back by 11 pm to a dimly lit house. As I came in the door, I heard my dad’s voice from the recliner: “We need to talk.”  Daddy had noticed that my decline in passion for football coincided with my rise in interest in Leah. So, he put forward a mandate – “you either need to date this girl or play football. Which is it?” As a teenager, that seemed like a rather unfair sacrifice to make, but at the end of the day, it would not have been all that hard of a decision. But, I explained to my dad that my disinterest in football came from a coach I didn’t care for, not my infatuation with Leah.

When it comes to love, sacrifice is an easy choice. It may be painful. It may cost. It may mean you leave a place and never return. But, if you love someone, you’ll do it. This is the question before us today – what are you willing to sacrifice for the sake of your faith in Christ? To consider that question, let’s read Heb. 11:17-19. There are two points I want you to see from this passage: true faith sacrifices with gladness and true faith trusts in God’s goodness.

First, from verses 17 and 18, see that true faith sacrifices with gladness. The story that the writer references here is found in Genesis 22. In my opinion, it is one of the most important stories in all of scripture because of how it defines faith and what it points to. If you read Genesis 22, you’ll find that God comes to Abraham in a vision and calls him to take his son, Isaac, to a mountain and there sacrifice him. By all accounts, this is an insane request. The philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, was so stunned by this story that he wrote a whole book, Fear and Trembling, to wrestle with what it means. The request is stunning because of the historical context of Abraham’s life and the work that God has done in it so far. For the past 25 years of Abraham’s life, he has waited on this son. And, he’s waited that long because God promised it. Not only had God promised it, but he worked a miracle to make it happen – enabling Sarah to conceive even after she’d experienced menopause. So, why would God command Abraham to sacrifice this son of promise after all of that? It’s also insane, because with all of that considered, Abraham is obedient to the command. He doesn’t him-haw around about it. He doesn’t make excuses, like Moses. He doesn’t ask for a sign, like Gideon. Genesis says that he rose early the next morning, saddled his donkey, grabbed his knife, called his servants and his son, and then walked three days into the wilderness to get to the mountain God would reveal.

As Kierkegaard points out, Abraham doesn’t act on some ethical imperative. You might be able to justify this, ethically speaking, if Abraham had made a promise to do such a thing and was simply fulfilling his promise. Or, you might say that Abraham was morally correct to sacrifice his son if it meant that his death would save thousands. But none of that is in view here. God simply commands it, and Abraham simply obeys. Why? Hebrews 11:17 gives the answer. He acted on faith. Abraham had come to trust God completely with everything in his life, including the son of promise.

Brothers and sisters, this is what true saving faith looks like. True faith gladly sacrifices. One of the most difficult verses in all of Scripture is found in Luke 9:23 – “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” What does true faith in Christ look like? It looks like cross-carrying. It looks like dying to self – to our own wishes and desires and priorities and loves. It means that we sacrifice our conveniences. Later on, in Luke 9:57, a would-be disciple comes to Jesus and says he will follow him wherever he goes. To this, Jesus says, “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” Friend, here me – claiming to believe in Jesus as your savior while allowing any and every hobby, the smallest of scheduling conflicts, or the excuse of fatigue from a long weekend to hinder your worship and discipleship is not true, saving faith. Jesus does not exist to make you feel better or to give you comfort about how you live your life. You exist to serve and worship Christ, and no earthly convenience should hinder that.

True faith also sacrifices relationships. Again, in Luke 9:59, another man comes to Jesus, desiring to be his disciple, but first he has to bury his father. To this, Jesus responds, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead.” What a cold and callous response! How could Jesus say such a thing? Doesn’t he know that every man has a responsibility to his family? Doesn’t he want us to show compassion on the bereaved? Well, if you think that’s harsh, consider what he says in Luke 14:26 – “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Now, understand that Jesus loves to use hyperbole and extreme comparisons to drive home a point. But, love for Christ should be so great that even our love for our children should look like hate. Yet, the number of people I know who have sacrificed their relationship to God for the sake of worldly relationships is too numerous to count. There are people who will give up on church, saying, “I know what the pastor or the church would think of my live-in girlfriend or the unbeliever I’m dating, and I’d rather have her than the church.” There are people who have walked away from the faith altogether because their son or daughter came out as homosexual, and they’d rather accept that lifestyle than hold true to the faith. There are people who have distorted the true Christian faith so they can feel at ease about their sexual perversion. But Christ calls us to sacrifice even our deepest relationships and desires to be his disciple.

Lastly, true faith sacrifices the body. Romans 12:1 says, “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” To the Roman, the body was a vessel to be used and abused as one saw fit. The Romans reveled in all sorts of debauchery, from festivals of drunkenness and gluttony to the use of slaves and lower classes of both genders as receptacles for their own sexual fulfillment. Nothing was unclean or impure to the Roman citizen. But Paul comes along and changes the world with this concept – the body is a living sacrifice, a temple of God. He says that what we do with our bodies matters. So, we aren’t to join them to a prostitute or be drunk with wine or engorge ourselves at pagan feasts. We are to consider our bodies, our desires, our impulses, as a sacrifice to God.

With all this talk of sacrifice, I don’t want you to make the mistake of thinking that our sacrifices earn salvation. I also don’t want you to think that God calls us to sacrifice because he is an oppressive, vindictive God who revels in our suffering. To disprove those thoughts, consider my second point: true faith trusts in God’s goodness. In Heb. 11:19, the writer explains why Abraham had this level of faith in God. He says that he considered that God was able to raise him from the dead to fulfill his promise. In Gen. 22:7-8, we read that when Abraham and Isaac approached the place of sacrifice, Isaac asked, “dad, where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” To that question, Abraham responded, “God will provide for himself a lamb for the burnt offering.” Oh, how beautiful is this picture of Abraham’s faith in God’s promise! He didn’t know how. He didn’t know when. But he believed with every fiber of his being that God would be faithful to his promise. He believed that God’s intention for him was good, even when he called him to do something insane. But, his faith didn’t stop there. As the writer of Hebrews tells us, he even believed that God would raise his son from the dead in order to keep his promise.

Brothers and sisters, God does not call us to sacrifice out of guilt or indebtedness. He doesn’t call us to do it to pay him back. We are called to sacrifice in gratitude for what God has done. And, we are called to sacrifice because the way of Christ is best. Even when we go without the conveniences of this life, we do so knowing that Christ will meet our needs, and we can be content in that. Even when we resist our desires, we do so knowing that the love of God is enough. God is good and gracious, and he will fulfill his promises to us. So let us live as sacrifices for him in response to that love and grace.