Giving God your All

I’d like to tell you a true story about a man and woman who learned to trust God. Bill and Helen Furnish were high school sweethearts. Soon after graduation they married. Their parents thought them a bit young, but Bill and Helen had grown up in the church, and there comes a time when parents have to let their children go.

The young couple worked hard to put themselves through college. It was a struggle, but they had youth and energy on their side. After college, Bill began a promising career in sales. They decided it was finally time to begin a family. How they had longed for a baby. For eleven long years they waited.

Finally, with the joy that only an expectant mother can know, Helen broke the good news to Bill. “We’re going to have a baby.” They were excited. Soon after the birth of their son Steven, the doctor told Helen that other children would be too great a risk to her health. She and Bill agreed to the surgery which would eliminate the possibility of other children from their future. That was 1951.

Theirs was a happy family, and they thanked God daily for their son and all the blessings of their home. Time seemed to pass quickly for them, and soon Steven graduated from high school. Viet Nam was in the national focus and Steven decided, along with a few of his friends, to join the Marines.

To make a long story short, just five days after Steve had been assigned to Viet Nam, a Marine chaplain and another officer knocked on Bill and Helen’s front door. Steve had been killed by a sniper on his first day of patrol.

Bill and Helen’s world shattered. Bill took a leave from work, and for three months they withdrew and mourned the loss of their only son. Bill’s company offered him a job transfer to Southern California. After much prayer, they decided to take the new job, hoping that their new surroundings would help them cope with their grief.

They moved to the town of Oceanside and found a lovely house. On most days they could look to the west and see the Pacific Ocean. But to their surprise, they soon discovered that their new home was only a few miles from the Camp Pendleton Marine Base. It seemed that everywhere they looked in their new community, they saw young men and women in uniform. Each Marine they saw was a painful reminder of Steve, the son they had lost.

Bill and Helen’s story doesn’t end there. But it serves to help us understand how parents feel when they lose a child. Abraham must have been feeling those same things as he trudged up the slope of Mount Moriah in Genesis 22. With his beloved son Isaac, the son of God’s promise, by his side, Abraham must have asked a thousand times the question “Why?” Why does God want me to give up my son? The son He promised me. The son He gave me. Why?

Genesis 22 is one of the most dramatic chapters in all of the Bible. Who can read it and ever forget the shocking picture it paints of a father tying his son up, placing him on the altar, and raising the knife to sacrifice him? Even as we read it, we ask along with Abraham the question “Why?”

Perhaps you have read books or seen movies which have more than one theme. You are aware as the plot unfolds of a couple of themes that are being developed. This is how it is with Genesis 22. This chapter has more than one theme. On one level, Genesis 22 is a theological drama. There is a father. There is a beloved only son. There is a lonely hill in the center of Judea. There is a harsh reality that requires that a sacrifice must be made. The son becomes the victim. The child of the promise must die. And at the end of the story, there is a substitute.

You don’t have to be a theologian to understand that there is a striking parallel between this story in Gen.22 and the life and death of Jesus Christ. Jesus, the Son of God, like Isaac, was the Son of the promise. The world waited long for his coming. When He came there was rejoicing. The prophecies had been fulfilled. But the shadow of death hung over His life. Jesus came to die. The sin of man could only be covered by the blood of an innocent substitute. And Jesus became that substitute. Unlike Isaac, whose life was spared, He died on that hill called Calvary. And Calvary is on the very same ridge in central Palestine where Abraham offered up Isaac. So Genesis 22 is like a signpost in the OT that points us to the Gospel in the NT. It is just one act in the drama of redemption that is being played out in the entire Bible.

But there is another theme being developed in Gen.22, a much more personal and down to earth theme. It is the story of a man who was called upon to give up his own son as the price for trusting God. It is the story of an obedience that cost everything. It is the story of an act of worship that was based upon total commitment. And it is the story of a man’s faith that was so strong that it was able to look beyond death itself.

Abraham was a man who trusted God. He trusted God enough to leave his home in Ur and follow God’s leading to a land he didn’t know. He trusted God enough to stay up in the hills of Judah when the good life beckoned him to come down on the plain of Sodom. He trusted God enough to tithe all that he had to the King of Salem, who was the representative of God Most High. And he trusted God enough to believe that God could give him a son, even though he was a hundred and his wife was ninety.

And a son he got. Isaac was born, and Abraham and Sarah rejoiced. God had kept his promise. And they all lived happily ever after, right? Wrong. God is never content to make us comfortable, he wants to make us like Christ. In order to do that, He tests us. He puts us through the wringer. Look at

Genesis 22:1 Some time later God tested Abraham.

It is one thing to trust God when everything seems to be going according to plan. It’s quite another to trust God when things begin to go in the opposite direction. After having waited so long for God to give him the promised son, God was now asking Abraham to give him back.

Genesis 22:2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

How do you respond when God takes away something that you think you’re entitled to? Something that you feel you deserve. Especially if you believe that God gave it to you in the first place. Abraham must have felt all those things about Isaac. But how did he respond?

Genesis 22:3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled 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.

When given the choice of obeying God and forfeiting the blessing, or disobeying God and keeping the blessing, Abraham chose to obey. Because Abraham knew God well enough by this time to trust that God would never do anything that wasn’t ultimately going to be good. Even something as horrifying as sacrificing his own son would turn out for good if God told him to do it. So he obeyed.

Abraham’s focus in life was upon God, not upon the things that God gave him. It is so easy to get our focus on the wrong things. We become so attached to the good things that God gives us: family, children, home, successful career, that we subtly shift our focus away from God the Giver to the gifts themselves.

Make no mistake about it. Abraham loved his son. Only the second appearance of the word “love” in the whole Bible is here in verse 2 describing how Abraham felt about his son. But the point is: Abraham loved God more.

Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.

Matthew 19:29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.

When Abraham got to the hill in the land of Moriah, which was one day going to be the hill on which the temple was built, he had no idea how God was going to provide a way out of this dilemma. God had promised him a son as his heir. God had given him that son. Now God wanted him to sacrifice his only son. How could he reconcile these things? But he trusted in God’s character as the one who always does right, and he trusted in God’s power to bring Isaac back from the dead if necessary.

Hebrews 11:17-19 By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

And as we see in v.13, God provided a way for His promise to be fulfilled by providing a substitute for Isaac in the form of a ram caught in a thicket.

How much do you trust God this morning? Do you trust Him enough to give Him your all? Your relationships? Your marriage? Your family? Your career? Your home? Your finances? Or are you holding anything back, because you find it hard to really trust God?

Let me tell you a little more about Bill and Helen Furnish, the parents who had to give up their son Steve. Being Christians, Bill and Helen got in their car early that first Sunday in their new home and began to drive around looking for a church. As they sat through the service, they were haunted by the question “Why?” “Why did God take our Steve?” “And why has He led us here, only to be tormented by the sight of all these Marines?”

After church, they stopped for lunch at a little café where they could watch the ocean. They tried unsuccessfully to make sense of their situation. As they drove back home, they saw a lone Marine hitchhiking with a sign that said “Home”. On impulse, Bill pulled over and offered the young soldier a ride. As they drove along, the Marine explained that he had finished his training and was going to Arizona to see his folks before shipping overseas. Bill and Helen didn’t share the sadness in their own hearts, but lovingly listened to him and drove him all the way into town where Bill bought him a bus ticket to Arizona. “You can waste a lot of valuable time hitchhiking.” he said. “I know your parents must be anxious to see you.”

Although they never really sat down and discussed it, from that day on, Bill and Helen Furnish made a silent commitment to be available to the young men and women God might send their way as they trained at the Marine base. Their pastor encouraged them to begin a ministry to these lonely young people who were far from home. Before long, dozens of people in the church became involved.

Hardly a week went by when Bill and Helen did not have Marine recruits in their home. The women of the church began a “cookie ministry” for the boys who were far from Mom’s home baked treats. Bill got some business cards printed up with their name and address and the phrase “a home away from home”.

Bill and Helen’s pain and sorrow over Steve slowly began to heal as they gave themselves away in ministry. The spring returned to their step, and they felt that God had, indeed, led them there.

One day in the mail, as so often happened, there was a letter from a grateful Marine. It read “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Furnish, You probably don’t remember me, but I was hitchhiking a few months ago and you picked me up. I just had to write and tell you something. When you picked me up, I had run away from the base. I was AWOL. I was angry and confused. I felt that nobody in the world cared whether I lived or died. But you were so caring to me. You were so kind. Mr. Furnish, when you prayed with me and slipped me that $20 bill, I tried to be cool. But Mrs. Furnish, when you hugged me and told me you hoped to see me again, my heart broke. I did not know of another person on earth who wanted to see me again. I cried when my bus pulled away.

When you picked me up, I had run away. I was AWOL. I felt that nobody cared about me. I had decided that if a car picked me up, I would kill the people and steal the car. I had a sharpened bayonet with me, and as soon as I got into the back seat, I took it out of my bag and laid it across my knees. But as we drove along, you talked kindly to me and I guess you showed me love. Your spirit was so sweet that I just couldn’t do as I had planned. If you’ll look under the back seat of your car, you’ll find where I hid the bayonet when you weren’t looking.

Bill and Helen went out to the car and looked and there it was. That big long knife now hangs on the wall of their den, very close to the picture of their son Steve And in that den there are hundreds of photos of young men and women who have passed through Camp Pendleton and had their lives forever changed by the ministry of Bill and Helen Furnish.

Tragedy can make you bitter or better. It all depends on how tightly you were holding on to whatever God asked you to give up to Him. Maybe you’re sitting here this morning and you’ve lost something very precious in your life. A husband, a child, a marriage, a career, a reputation, a dream. Whatever it is, just remember that God only takes away to give us back something better in return. You can trust Him for that.