The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing
Abraham was old when Isaac was born, old enough indeed to have been his grandfather, and the
child became at once the delight and idol of his heart. From that moment when he first stooped to
take the tiny form awkwardly in his arms he was an eager love-slave of his son. God went out of His
way to comment on the strength of this affection. And it is not hard to understand. The baby represented
everything sacred to his father’s heart: the promises of God, the covenants, the hopes of the
years and the long messianic dream. As he watched him grow from babyhood to young manhood the
heart of the old man was knit closer and closer with the life of his son, till at last the relationship
bordered upon the perilous. It was then that God stepped in to save both father and son from the
consequences of an uncleansed love.
“Take now thy son,” said God to Abraham, “thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get
thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains
which I will tell thee of.”
The sacred writer spares us a close-up of the agony that night on the slopes
near Beersheba when the aged man had it out with his God, but respectful imagination may view in
awe the bent form and convulsive wrestling alone under the stars. Possibly not again until a Greater
than Abraham wrestled in the Garden of Gethsemane did such mortal pain visit a human soul. If only
the man himself might have been allowed to die. That would have been easier a thousand times, for
he was old now, and to die would have been no great ordeal for one who had walked so long with
God. Besides, it would have been a last sweet pleasure to let his dimming vision rest upon the figure
of his stalwart son who would live to carry on the Abrahamic line and fulfill in himself the promises
of God made long before in Ur of the Chaldees.
How should he slay the lad! Even if he could get the consent of his wounded and protesting
heart, how could he reconcile the act with the promise, “In Isaac shall thy seed be called”? This was
Abraham’s trial by fire, and he did not fail in the crucible. While the stars still shone like sharp white
points above the tent where the sleeping Isaac lay, and long before the gray dawn had begun to
lighten the east, the old saint had made up his mind. He would offer his son as God had directed him
to do, and then trust God to raise him from the dead. This, says the writer to the Hebrews, was the
solution his aching heart found sometime in the dark night, and he rose “early in the morning” to
carry out the plan. It is beautiful to see that, while he erred as to God’s method, he had correctly
sensed the secret of His great heart. And the solution accords well with the New Testament Scripture,
“Whosoever will lose... for my sake shall find...”
God let the suffering old man go through with it up to the point where He knew there would be
no retreat, and then forbade him to lay a hand upon the boy. To the wondering patriarch He now says
in effect, “It’s all right, Abraham. I never intended that you should actually slay the lad. I only
wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there. I wanted
to correct the perversion that existed in your love. Now you may have the boy, sound and well. Take
him and go back to your tent. Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing that thou hast not withheld
thy son, thine only son, from me.”
Then heaven opened and a voice was heard saying to him, “By myself I have sworn, saith the
Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in
blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as
the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy
seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.”
The old man of God lifted his head to respond to the Voice, and stood there on the mount strong
and pure and grand, a man marked out by the Lord for special treatment, a friend and favorite of the
Most High. Now he was a man wholly surrendered, a man utterly obedient, a man who possessed
nothing.
He had concentrated his all in the person of his dear son, and God had taken it from him.
God could have begun out on the margin of Abraham’s life and worked inward to the center; He
chose rather to cut quickly to the heart and have it over in one sharp act of separation. In dealing thus
He practiced an economy of means and time. It hurt cruelly, but it was effective.
I have said that Abraham possessed nothing. Yet was not this poor man rich? Everything he had
owned before was still his to enjoy: sheep, camels, herds, and goods of every sort. He had also his
wife and his friends, and best of all he had his son Isaac safe by his side. He had everything, but he
possessed nothing.
There is the spiritual secret. There is the sweet theology of the heart which can
be learned only in the school of renunciation. The books on systematic theology overlook this, but
the wise will understand.
After that bitter and blessed experience I think the words “my” and “mine” never had again the
same meaning for Abraham. The sense of possession which they connote was gone from his heart.
Things had been cast out forever. They had now become external to the man. His inner heart was
free from them. The world said, “Abraham is rich,” but the aged patriarch only smiled. He could not
explain it to them, but he knew that he owned nothing, that his real treasures were inward and eternal.
There can be no doubt that this possessive clinging to things is one of the most harmful habits
in the life. Because it is so natural it is rarely recognized for the evil that it is; but its outworkings are
tragic.
We are often hindered from giving up our treasures to the Lord out of fear for their safety; this is
especially true when those treasures are loved relatives and friends. But we need have no such fears.
Our Lord came not to destroy but to save.
Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing
is really safe which is not so committed.
Our gifts and talents should also be turned over to Him. They should be recognized for what
they are, God’s loan to us, and should never be considered in any sense our own. We have no more
right to claim credit for special abilities than for blue eyes or strong muscles. “For who maketh thee
to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?”
The Christian who is alive enough to know himself even slightly will recognize the symptoms
of this possession malady, and will grieve to find them in his own heart. If the longing after God is
strong enough within him he will want to do something about the matter. Now, what should he do?
First of all he should put away all defense and make no attempt to excuse himself either in his
own eyes or before the Lord. Whoever defends himself will have himself for his defense, and he will
have no other; but let him come defenseless before the Lord and he will have for his defender no less
than God Himself. Let the inquiring Christian trample under foot every slippery trick of his deceitful
heart and insist upon frank and open relations with the Lord.
Then he should remember that this is holy business. No careless or casual dealings will
suffice.
Let him come to God in full determination to be heard. Let him insist that God accept his all,
that He take things out of his heart and Himself reign there in power. It may be he will need to
become specific, to name things and people by their names one by one. If he will become drastic
enough he can shorten the time of his travail from years to minutes and enter the good land long
before his slower brethren who coddle their feelings and insist upon caution in their dealings with
God.
Let us never forget that such a truth as this cannot be learned by rote as one would learn the
facts of physical science. They must be experienced before we can really know them. We must in
our hearts live through Abraham’s harsh and bitter experiences if we would know the blessedness
which follows them. The ancient curse will not go out painlessly; the tough old miser within us will
not lie down and die obedient to our command. He must be torn out of our heart like a plant from the
soil; he must be extracted in agony and blood like a tooth from the jaw. He must be expelled from
our soul by violence as Christ expelled the money changers from the temple. And we shall need to
steel ourselves against his piteous begging, and to recognize it as springing out of self-pity, one of
the most reprehensible sins of the human heart.
If we would indeed know God in growing intimacy we must go this way of renunciation. And if
we are set upon the pursuit of God, He will sooner or later bring us to this test. Abraham’s testing
was, at the time, not known to him as such, yet if he had taken some course other than the one he did,
the whole history of the Old Testament would have been different. God would have found His man,
no doubt, but the loss to Abraham would have been tragic beyond the telling. So we will be brought
one by one to the testing place, and we may never know when we are there. At that testing place
there will be no dozen possible choices for us; just one and an alternative, but our whole future will
be conditioned by the choice we make.
A. W. Tozer
Pursuit of God
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