The Faithful Sacrifice

Well, this morning we look to begin Chapter 22 and also complete Chapter 22, which will take us within 100 yards or so of the end of the Abrahamic cycle, functionally, within the narrative of Genesis, when we get to the death of Sarah, his wife, and the purchase of the burial plot at Machpelah.

And so it's important to think through how significant this chapter is as we come to the very end of the Abraham cycle and the beginning of Isaac's cycle. And so that's why I included in the bulletin a little blurb at the bottom of the left-hand page on the inside, just to show you the literary structure of what we've been through over several months now.

The Literary Structure of Genesis and the End of the Abraham Cycle

Now, when you look at how the, as you remember, the toledoth, the generations, how these little genealogies become the sort of thread that runs across Genesis and organizes the narrative, and that's easy to miss because we've been through a lot of material from Chapter 11 to Chapter 22, but when you put it together in this structure, in what we call a chiasm, it's very easy to see that there's this incredible literary skill that's gone into how the story has been told, what's been included, and why it has been included.

And so I hope you can see that, see the parallels between what's going inward toward the ease and then what's coming out, how they each are paired. And then, of course, where we began is where we end, with a genealogy, this time with Nahor.

And the sermon today, we're not going to get into that genealogy, and there won't be a sermon next week on the genealogy of Nahor, but I'm so glad we read it, especially to hear Tony pronounce some of those names, that was my joy this morning.

Abraham’s Sacrifice, Not Isaac’s

What we do want to focus on in Genesis Chapter 22 is, of course, the sacrifice of Abraham. And it's very important that we think of it that way. So often you hear the sacrifice of Isaac, meaning he's the one being sacrificed, but that's not the focal point of Chapter 22 at all.

Isaac is completely passive in Chapter 22. The focal point is Abraham's sacrifice, the sacrifice that he makes. Last week, we saw Abraham and Abimelech make a covenant over a parcel of land, particularly a well.

There was a dispute, and they make a covenant to settle it. This is very significant in the storyline, because Abraham, from the time he was called out of Ur of the Chaldeans and entered into the promised land, has been a sojourner.

He's been the equivalent of a vandal or a subway graffiti artist, in that he's built altars in all the places that he's dwelt. And yet he had no formal, proper recognition of a dwelling place until he makes a covenant with Abimelech.

And now this well belongs to him. It's part of his inheritance. This is a major step forward in terms of the fulfillment of what God had promised. This is, as it were, this tiny little well is the down payment of the fact that he has an inheritance in this land, and his progeny will inherit this land according to God's promise.

He has his little boy, Isaac, the child of promise, bouncing on his lap year by year, getting bigger and stronger, learning more about the Lord God, hearing more about the stories from his mom and his dad about the life they left behind and what the Lord God has done, how He's appeared, that dark dream that fell upon him and gave him horror, but how the Lord passed through between the animal parts.

And as we'll even see in this chapter, since the Lord could swear by nothing greater than Himself, He swore by Himself that God would bless Abraham and Sarah. And this child knows that he has been the result of of 25 years of prayer and struggle and sacrifice and trust and patience and inheritance.

He is the down payment, the deposit, the earnest proof that God will do what he said. Things are going wonderfully. Years are rolling by, Abraham and Sarah enjoying their boy, watching him grow in wisdom and in stature, watching him go from strength to strength, and in a profound way, as a result of that, Abraham is going from strength to strength, too.

I can imagine how close his walk with the Lord had been. And then we come to this fateful chapter, and with it, a trial. There's four points I want to focus on. Each of these will guide us through this passage and help us reflect on faith.

Faith, that's key with Abraham, of course, and we'll see that again and again. So the first point is the trial of faith. That introduces us to the passage. Then we'll consider the evidence of faith. Third, the object of faith.

And then lastly, the devotion of faith. So the trial of faith, the evidence of faith, the object of faith, and the devotion of faith. Beginning in verse 1, we see the trial of faith. It came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham.

Now if you just pause there, there's a whole sermon just within that sentence, isn't there? It came to pass that God tested his servant. It came to pass. Now this is the narrator speaking. This is not something that Abraham found in his Gmail inbox.

What a test is coming. This is something that the narrator tells us. Abraham has no idea it's coming. Just as you or I often don't know that there's a subtext, there's this invisible reality that's taking place in our life, the Lord God is testing us.

It comes to pass, and it will come to pass in the Christian life, that God tests his people. Abraham by now has gotten accustomed. We don't have all the details of how this worked, but clearly, Abraham is able to know when the Lord God is revealing something to him.

Whether by vision, by utterance, by divine appearance, Abraham knows the Lord. God is his friend. God says to him, Abraham, and he said, here I am. And he said, take now your son. Your only son, Isaac, whom you love.

This is all strung together to make it so much more impactful and enigmatic. Not just your son, not just Isaac, but your son, your only son, Isaac, the one that you.

Love.

And go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I shall tell you. And that's all that's revealed to us. We don't even have recorded Abraham's reaction to this.

But it must have been utterly devastating, incomprehensibly shattering. This was the command of the Lord, and Abraham knew it. I can imagine a cold sweat. I can imagine him turning white. I can imagine his heart pumping deeply, feeling that in his feet, feeling nauseous, blocking out the thought from his mind.

There's no way that that's what was just communicated to me. The sacrifice of the son that we've been waiting 25 years to receive, the product of week after week and month after month and decade after decade of walking with you, and now you want me to bring him to a mountaintop and slay him before you and burn his corpse.

It becomes one of the most poignant, gripping scenes in the Scripture up to this point. I don't know if there's anything from Genesis 1 to now that even comes close. And we've lost something of the shock value of this because it has become so familiar.

To us.

If we could approach it for the first time, if you had never read the book of Genesis and you're doing what you ought to do when you read the Bible, which is your understanding, okay, what is this telling me about God?

What is this telling me about the purpose of God, His mission in the world? How does this point me forward to the fulfillment that is presented in the person and work of Jesus? If you're doing all that, you might have some good hints, but think of the readers back then, where so much was yet unknown, unrevealed about the one they were to look for.

And as much as you've seen the intimacy and the care of God, how do you understand this? How do you wrestle with this? We know that the infant sacrifice was practiced by Canaanites. Perhaps it was practiced by other people groups ahead of that.

Abraham's dwelling among Canaanites and proto-Canaanites, they may have been relatively familiar with child sacrifice. Of course, God utterly condemns it. It is an abomination in His sight, utterly forbidden for His people to participate in.

Leviticus 18, Deuteronomy 12. And given His unchangeable character, we recognize that God is not seeking the sacrifice of Isaac as though that's an acceptable sacrifice. He's not seeking it as though it would please Him.

What God desires is not an unacceptable sacrifice of Isaac, but rather how this event in God's intention will point forward to the sacrifice that will be accepted. And God is also plainly seeking to prove the faith of Abraham, so that He can bring to pass all that He has promised.

It's been a while since we've been there in Genesis 17, but there's some conditional language about the necessity of Abraham walking in the statutes and decrees of God, so that God can bring to pass all that He had promised.

Was the call, was the covenant in 15 completely unconditional? Yes. But then as God began to cultivate His grace in Abraham's life, He, as it were, enforces conditions upon the fulfillment of the covenant.

He, as it were, ratifies it and says, walk before me, be blameless in my sight, obey all that I command, and I will bring these things to pass. And so over the years, we've seen God slowly strip Abraham of his earthly schemes, his fleshly effort to find an alternative route to the promise being fulfilled.

And God has stripped all of that away. And as He strips it away, He gives increase, and He blesses, and He fortifies, and He presses, and He tries, and He answers, and He comforts, He assuages, He embraces.

And all of this is His cultivating of grace and faith and confidence and assurance in the life of Abraham, so that when the test comes, Abraham will be able to stand and not waver and not falter. Perhaps Abraham thought that the 25 years of struggle had been the hardest, and that separating from Ishmael was the final test.

Lord, this is not my heir, as You've said, and he must depart. Though I love him, he must depart. That was the last mess Abraham had made that needed to be cleaned up. Now, of course, he can sit back, content, resting in the promise, live out his old age, and watch Isaac become the heir of the fulfillment.

Surely he thought the hardest is behind him, but this is rarely the case in the life of.

Faith.

I don't want to discourage anyone in the Lord, but if you still have statistically half of your life left to live, you have not been through the hardest. It struck me reading Pilgrim's Progress that that's how John Bunyan lays out the life of.

Pilgrim.

There's no downward coast toward the end, right? There's difficulty after difficulty, and there's never the cruise control. In fact, when he faces the last enemy, it's the most devastating. He's at his wit's end, as it were, and he barely makes it through.

What is Bunyan portraying about the nature of the Christian life? As an old preacher said, beloved, expect your trials to multiply as you proceed toward heaven. Do not think that as you grow in grace, the path becomes smoother beneath your feet, the heavens become serener above your head.

On the contrary, God reckons that you're a soldier, and as you gain greater skill, he sends you on more difficult missions. He more fully fits your boat to brave the tempest and the storm, and so he'll send you only further and longer in more difficult seas so that you may honor him and increase in assurance.

This is a norm for the Christian life, right? He's not cultivating grace for nothing. When he's building faith and confidence and assurance, we can be assured that the testing is coming and all of that grace that he has been reinforcing and sowing into our lives is going to be used.

Assurance is likely the farthest thing from Abraham's mind in this moment. He finally thought, I got to this place, Lord, and my heart will always be whole before you, and I'm never going to depart again, and wait, what was that test again?

What was that? You can have anything but this, sacrifice, Isaac. It doesn't even make sense. Everything that you've promised me is now funneled through this boy. You will be a liar if you allow me to sacrifice him.

How will I secure an inheritance in the land? How will the nations become blessed through my seed if you're telling me to sacrifice.

Him?

Take my son, my only son, Isaac, the one that I love, and slay him on an altar. We learn here another principle about the trials of faith in the Christian life. God will never give us a trial that we can fully bear ourselves.

God will not give us a trial that we can fully bear ourselves. God is not in the business of self-sufficiency. He does not pad his people up to go on their merry way and find that deep inner strength that the world often thinks of as what Christians are on about.

Just dig deep in yourself and find that secret meaning and reservoir of power, and Christians.

Are like, what are you talking about?

I'm a dried up pot shirt. When that trial comes, I'm clinging to the Lord, and I'm pretty sure that's his design. And so we come to exactly what Jesus said, the nature of the trial. If you seek to save your life, you lose it, but if you're willing to lose your life, you.

Keep it.

To put it in different terms, if you give up Isaac, you keep him.

If you keep Isaac, you lose him.

And so Abraham, he presses forward in faith. Here, perhaps more than any other moment in the narrative, here is why we call Abraham our father in the faith, the father of all those who have faith. This is the Mount Everest of exemplars of faith in the Old Testament.

At every step, Abraham is hoping for the divine cancellation, for a change of plans, for some alternative course of action. Can you imagine the kind of intercession that Abraham would have been pouring out at every nanosecond between now, the time of the revelation, and the time that Isaac was being bound to the altar?

I mean, when God made it clear that he was going to destroy Sodom, Abraham stood against him and implored him and negotiated all the way down to a handful. And that was just for a wicked city like Sodom.

How much more would he be pouring out his heart in intercession at the thought of his son being sacrificed? May it not be, Lord. If we could put it in New Testament terms, Abraham would have been saying something like this, trembling, if there's any other way, let this cup pass.

But Abraham presses forward by faith, in the travel, in the provisions, in the gathering, in the building, in all of it, in grief, in torment, in prayer, until there was nothing left to do but hold the knife to his son, Abraham presses forward in this trial of.

Faith.

And thankfully, we're not left to speculate about the nature of that faith, because Hebrews 11 gives us the divine commentary on what's taking place here. Hebrews 11, beginning in verse 17, by faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, in Isaac your seed shall be called, concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense.

Do you understand what the writer of Hebrews is saying? Abraham already understood how Isaac came to him. It was as though he received him from the dead, from the deadness of Sarah's womb. In other words, there's already been one resurrection, and he concludes, if the promise is sure that in Isaac my seed will be called, then there's going to be a second resurrection, and therefore.

I go.

And we get a sense of this, don't we, in verse 3 and following. Abraham rose early in the morning, he saddled his donkey, took two of his young men with him, Isaac his son split the wood for the offering, arose, went to the place which God had told him.

And on the third day Abraham lifted his eyes and he saw the place far off and Abraham said to his young men, stay here, the lad and I will go yonder and worship and we will come.

Back to you.

He doesn't say and I will come back to you, he says we. Is this Abraham up to his old tricks? Is this just an easy white lie so not too many questions are being asked? No, I think this is what Hebrews 11 is talking about.

Even here, Abraham pressing forward in faith, he's concluding God promised, God promised that in Isaac my seed will be called. And therefore, if he calls me to sacrifice my son, my son will come back from the dead and we will come back and we will go home to the tent and God will fulfill all that he's promised.

He knew God, he trusted God. And so by faith he presses forward because he knows that it's in Isaac that this seed will bless the nations of the earth. And so Hebrews is right on to say he reckoned that God was able, not a question of ability.

We often question whether or not God is willing. God forbid we ever question his ability. We often feel very sorrowful that our faith is so weak. We smuggle ability in there somewhere. Do you think God is able to heal you?

Yes.

Yeah, I don't know if he's willing. That's not what I asked. Do you believe God is able to heal you? Abraham by faith reckoned that God was able. Notice this is C .H. Macintosh, very good devotional writer.

I would disagree with him on some of his larger views of things, but just devotional, he just hits it out of the park. He says, Abraham accounted that God was able. He never said Isaac was able. Isaac without God is nothing.

God without Isaac is everything. This is a principle of the most importance and one that comes to our heart most keenly. Does it make any difference to you to see the apparent channel of blessing all dried.

Up?

Am I dwelling sufficiently near the fountainhead? That's a capital F, near God. To be able with a worshiping spirit to behold all of my creaturely streams dry up. You see what he's saying there. This is the way.

This is the only way and it's drying up. It's coming to nothing. Do I have faith that God is able? Am I willing to hold fast, to follow through, to walk with God when every earthly scheme, every creaturely effort shrivels and dies?

When we look at Psalm 46 and we say, God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in a time of trouble. When we actually embrace that by faith, not as a token, not just as a refrigerator magnet or something that we want to put on our checkbook, but actually something we believe deeply in our heart, God is a refuge.

He's a help in a time of trouble, in a time of terror, in a time of difficulty. God is a refuge. He's a shield. And when you believe that, then you follow on with verse two, therefore we will not fear, though the earth be removed, though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.

Do you see what the psalmist is saying? Though the world is falling apart, though earth is being removed, whatever that means, though the mountains are being lifted and dropped into the Pacific, God is our refuge and our strength.

He's present in that time of cataclysmic trouble.

Do you believe that by faith?

Abraham believed that by faith. Abraham's earth was, for all intents and purposes, falling apart. If Abraham's soul had not been stayed on the Lord, he never would have yielded obedience.

Like this.

Truly the Lord was all of his hope and all of his stay. Whom do I have in heaven but you? Who else could give me this promise? Who else has been faithful throughout my whole long life? My heart, my flesh may fail, but God, you're the strength of my heart.

You're my portion forever. That's the kind of faith that Abraham has. And so we don't forget that though we're talking a lot about Abraham's faith, we're really talking about the God of Abraham who's been faithfully sowing grace into Abraham's life and is even now in chapter 22 when he says, your son, your only son, the son you love, he's supernaturally upholding Abraham's heart so that in that day of trial he will not falter.

Abraham is able to surrender his will. And God wants to bring all of his people to a place in their life where they're willing to surrender their will to his will, to trust him completely, to say, my life is in your hands, my home is in your hands, my children are in your hands, my provision, it's in your hands, Lord.

I'm surrendering my will, my schemes, the things that seem apparent to me, I'm surrendering.

That to you.

I'm walking by faith in what you've promised. Earlier in Hebrews leading us forward to chapter 11, the exhortation was to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. And in verse 13 and following, Abraham is again the poster boy.

God made a promise to Abraham and he could swear by no one greater. So he swore by himself saying, surely I will bless you. And multiplying, I will multiply you. And so after, not before, not even during, after Abraham had patiently endured, he obtained.

The promise.

Not before, not during, all right, you know, meet me halfway, Lord. Put myself out here, putting some skin in the game. Meet me halfway, because if you don't, I'm turning back. I made it a day and a half's journey and I'm not setting a foot further toward Moriah until you give me some comfort that I'm not, I'm not having to go all the way.

No, no, no, no.

After he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. And so Abraham is the model, the paradigm, the pattern of us walking by faith in what God has promised. It's why he's called the man of faith in the New Testament.

I know what it's like. You just feel, God, meet me halfway. If anything, we pat ourselves on the back. I took a big step of faith. And now you're waiting for everything to come flooding in so you can keep taking another step of faith.

But nothing comes flooding in. In fact, there's more difficulty, more opposition, more self-doubt. And this is why Abraham is the man of faith, the man of faith. He presses on and he presses on and he presses on.

And by patient endurance, he obtains the promise. I love what Paul says in Romans 4. I'm not even on point number two and I'm losing my voice.

That's never a good sign.

In Romans 4, Paul says, Abraham did not waver at the promise through unbelief. He doesn't say he never wavered, period. If you've been following along on Sunday mornings, Abraham's wavered a lot. But Paul says he never wavered at the promise through unbelief.

And it's never been tested quite like this. He's walking after God and God is blessing him and sanctifying him and working out his failures, showing him his sins, drawing him in close. And we read in Romans 4 .20, he was strengthened in faith.

So you can waver and you can get to a place where you're not wavering in unbelief and yet you still need to be strengthened. I'm just amazed at that. If you put verse 16 and verse 20 together, I'm not wavering in unbelief, Lord, I'm going to go through with it, but strengthen me.

This is the Abrahamic equivalent of, Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief, because there's both going on in my heart. And so this is the trial of faith. He was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, being fully convinced, fully convinced that what he had promised, he was able to perform, fully convinced, oh, that God would give his people hearts that are fully convinced that what he has promised, he is able to perform.

The Evidence of Faith in Abraham’s Obedience

And secondly, we see this faith worked out. We see the evidence of faith. So we see the trial of faith and if you're a Christian, these trials are going to come. It's the nature of the Christian life.

We see Christians, brothers and sisters, endure trials and their faith seems to be weakened and they seem to be clinging and they look around and they begin to envy believers who don't seem to be going through such trials at that particular time.

They wonder, am I just so sinful, so completely under the wrath of God that I'm being chastised and chastised and punted out of God's will and these other people, their whole lives are in order and God is pleased with them and I'm just that misfit child that never could actually receive his blessing.

And it's those people that we look around and we feel that they're a lot closer to God. And if you've been living the Christian life for any length of time and you haven't faced trials, I have to ask, are you actually living the Christian life?

God chastens whom he loves. Those who seek to live a godly life will suffer. That's a maxim for Paul. Not a good thing to go through decades in the Christian life and never be tried and never struggle and never face trials.

There should be alarm bells in your conscience, am I a Christian? Because it doesn't seem like God is actually refining me. He's not cultivating and testing what he's planted in my life. In other words, there must be an evidence of faith, there must be faith worked out.

And look at this faith worked out, he rises early in the morning, that's amazing to me. He doesn't sleep in, he doesn't do what I would do, which is take like a week-long depression nap and basically as long as I'm in bed and I'm asleep, I don't have to think about it and I don't have to do anything.

He is such a man of faith that he wakes up early to go do this. He loads up early, crack of dawn, he starts saddling up, there's wood to cut, there's three days of travel, and every time he stops to take a little rest break or they make a campfire and set up the tent for the night and he embraces his little boy.

And the shuddering horror of what has to take place, hours and hours closer than when they.

Left.

And he has to build the altar, and he has to watch his boy help him drag the stones.

To the place.

This is real work, this is real evidence of faith. It's not the kind of faith that says, just take, Lord, and I'll be passive. It's the kind of faith that he's actually working to bring about that which is the hardest, the most impossibly difficult thing to do.

And he's up early working at it so that he might prove his faith and obedience to God, to show God that he loves him and he trusts him, and that is faith. Macintosh, again, it's easy to make a show of devotion when there's no demand for it.

Easy to show devotion when there's no opposition, no pressure, no sacrifice. It's easy to say, even if I have to die with you, I'll never deny you, until you're surrounded with people that are kind of intimidating, you know, little slave girls by the campfire.

And then you actually deny him three times. Faith stands the trial. Faith stands the trial. Easy to say when there's no pressure. Peter fails in his faith. Peter stumbles in his faith. Peter has a lack of faith, he breaks down.

Faith isn't talk. Faith doesn't talk about what it will do, what it would do. Faith is what it does. By God's grace, what it does, that's faith. God was not testing Abraham in this cruelly abrupt way.

He was testing him in light of grace that he had been building into his life over decades. And he's seeking to do this in order to bring out the good that he has planted and watered. And so we get to Philippians, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

Why?

Because it is God who works in both to will and to do his good pleasure. It's evidence of faith. We know that every good gift comes from above, and we know that even our faith is a gift. God is working that in.

No wonder the trial must come so that there's an evidence of that grace in our life. There's an evidence of our faith in God. In other words, we're working out what God has been working in. I don't know if this is necessarily great reading.

I'm a fan, to some extent, of Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, kind of father of existentialism. One of his great works is called Fear and Trembling, in part quoting Philippians. And the whole theme throughout that whole book is Abraham's faith, the leap of faith that's a buzzword for an existentialist the leap of faith in his sacrifice, his willingness to sacrifice Isaac.

And what always grips me, if you find the Penguin paperback edition of that, I mean, painters have been painting this imagery for centuries, but Penguin publishers chose, I think, the greatest. A lot of them are this elderly man holding a knife, somewhat removed, and Isaac's confused, but the Renaissance painter Caravaggio, just stunning.

Pitch black, his technique, it's called chiaroscuro, and there's this little boy, and it's the most horrified look you've ever seen. And Abraham's thumb is pressing into his cheek as he holds the knife and looks to see the angel in almost as much terror as Isaac reaching out to stop the scene.

It's just a stunning image. It's gripping. And what strikes me about that is not the horror of the angelic stop sign, not the horror of Isaac bound to the altar, it's the resolution of Abraham. He's the only one in the scene with almost no expression.

He's gone into such a state of obedience that if you notice in a text, the angel has to say, Abraham, Abraham, Abraham. It's like he can't just say it one time calmly. It's a real interruption. That's evidence of Abraham's faith.

This wasn't kind of waiting for it, antsy. He had woke up early, loaded everything, built the altar, everything was moving forward. That's the kind of faith Abraham had. Let's get this over with so you can bring him back and we can go home.

But someone's going to say, you have faith, I have works. Show me your faith without your works. I'll show you my faith by my works. Do you want to know, oh foolish man, that faith without works is dead?

Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works when he offered Isaac, his son, on the.

Altar?

Don't you see? That faith was working together with his works, and by works, his faith was made perfect, complete, mature, and so the scripture is fulfilled, which says, Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him as righteousness, and he was called the friend of God, and so you see, a man is justified by works and not by faith alone, James 2, 18 and following.

James 2 quotes two episodes in the Old Testament that if you follow Richard Bauckham, he argues these are the only two episodes in the Old Testament where a character's faith is explicitly said to have been justified by works, Rahab and Abraham.

And James clearly agrees with Paul. He quotes Genesis 15, 6 to show that it is indeed true, it is indeed true that Abraham was justified by faith, apart from works, that's Genesis 15, 6. And then James elaborates and says, Amen, yes, Paul and I preach the same gospel and we see things the same way.

And I know Paul would agree with me also, that it's easy to say you have faith, but the kind of faith that actually matters to God is a faith that has evidence. It's a faith that has been substantiated.

It's a faith that is on display. And so you can say you have faith, but I'm going to show you, I'm going to show you. Do you want me to proof text?

Abraham showed his faith.

That's what James 2 is saying. And look at the response of God, through the angel of the Lord, verse 12, now I know, now I know that you fear God. Of course, God is omniscient, he knows all things, but there's something that's being stated here about the purpose of God and the life.

Now I know, and now you know just how much you fear me. God speaks as though it had never been proven before, even though God foreordained it for Abraham to walk it out, even though God is the one who had been cultivating it, it was necessary for Abraham to have the evidence of that faith.

Now I know. Faith is always proven by action, always, always. And this makes genuine faith so incredibly rare. We live in a day when people claim they have faith, even though it's not attached to any specific object.

They just, oh, I have faith, you got to have faith. In what? Faith, joy, family, friends, it's like all these buzzwords. Faith in what? Some things are not worth having faith in. Paul says if you have a certain kind of faith that denies a historical resurrection, your faith is foolishness, it's worthless, you should be pitied.

Faith is not a virtue in and of itself, faith is only virtuous depending on the object of.

Faith.

What do you have faith in? We live in a day still where faith is a rare gem, Abrahamic faith, faith on display, faith substantiated, faith surrendered, faith obedient, faith resilient. And so let's talk about, thirdly, the object of faith.