One of the heroes of faith in Heb 11 is Abraham, whom God ‘tested’ by asking him to kill his one and only son. Why would God do such a thing? Well there are 2 main reasons why we test people.
One is to see who makes the cut. Before one moves to the next stage of development (e.g. education), they need to prove they’ve understood what they’ve learnt so far. The second is to make a person stronger. Cramming for an exam or training for a physical test is actually what helps the person reach the standards required.
Since God knows the outcome of every test, because he isn’t tied to time the same way humans are, he doesn’t need to test whether people make the cut or not. God tests people for the simple purpose of growing their faith to make them strong. He does this by placing situations before people that look utterly stupid, and asking them to trust him.
In Heb 11:8-22 God asks Abraham (ii) to pack all his belongings and move, without knowing where (v. 8), (ii) to make a home on someone else’s land (v. 9), (iii) to start trying to have a baby at age 75 (v. 11), then after finally having that child some 25 years later, (iv) to kill that child (v. 17). Each of these situations looked utterly stupid. Yet whenever Abraham failed to trust God, he ended up being the one who looked stupid.
When God places similarly stupid looking situations before us, we must acknowledge that God is testing us. We pass by looking to THE most stupid plan in human history; the Son of God leaving heaven to be rejected, betrayed, abandoned, flogged and finally killed by his creatures. The cross looked stupid. Yet it brought about the greatest victory in the universe; our redemption. The cross shows just how stupid it is to not trust and obey God.
