Fear Of God // Stand In AweSample

Abraham & the Fear of God

Of all the great Bible stories I heard growing up, there was always one that I found really confusing, and that is the story of Abraham. You see, God promised a child to Abraham when he was 100 years old and his wife was 90. I don’t know how many 100 year olds you know that have had children at that age, but I definitely haven’t met any yet! What God promised to Abraham made absolutely no sense biologically!

But the Bible reveals that God followed through on his promise and blessed Abraham and Sarah with a child. I remember reading this when I was younger, getting to this part of the story thinking everything was going to work out perfectly, and then arriving at today’s Scripture and reading that all of a sudden God tells Abraham to sacrifice his child!

God asks Abraham to give up the promise of Genesis 12 without any explanation or indication of the outcome of the situation. I know that if this happened to me, I would be pretty confused, and would feel pretty hard done by. But Abraham, rather than questioning God, instantly obeyed Him, even though it didn’t make sense to him. 

As a result of his fear of God, Abraham tied his son, Isaac, to the altar and was prepared to take his life. He was willing to obey God to the point of sacrificing his son, because he intimately knew who God was and how He was in control of everything. 

Abraham obeyed, instantly demonstrating a confident fear of the Lord. He had been given a promise which he believed in, but he concluded that God’s ways were higher, and he trusted in God to create a way for it to still happen. In Hebrews 11, it even says that Abraham had confidence that God would raise Isaac from the dead so that the promise would be fulfilled. 

The amazing thing about this story is that God made a way out, so that Abraham could both know that he feared God, and could also hold onto the promise God had given him. When you learn to stand in awe of God, it makes it much easier to deal with situations that don’t make sense; for God’s ways are higher than our ways and his plans for our life are far greater than anything we could ever dream or imagine.