By T. Austin-Sparks
"And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend" (Exodus 33:11).
"Didst not thou, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before thy people Israel, and gavest it to the seed of Abraham thy friend for ever?" (2 Chronicles 20:7).
"But thou, Israel, my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend" (Isaiah 61:8).
"By faith Abraham, being tried, offered up Isaac: yea, he that had gladly received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; even he to whom it was said, In Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that God is able to raise up, even from the dead; from whence he did also in a parable receive him back" (Hebrews 11:17-19).
"And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness; and he was called the friend of God" (James 2:23).
There are many astonishing things in the Bible. Few of them, however, are more so than this - that God should desire a friend.
We would think that of all things God would be able to get on quite well without having men in that relationship with Himself. I say it is an astonishing thought that God, in all His self-sufficiency, His fullness, His creative power, should want a friend, but here it is - "Abraham my friend" ... "the friend of God".
This, dear friends, is the one thing in the mind of God behind all His strange ways. Probably in all the Bible there was no one who had greater reason than did Abraham to think of God's ways as being very strange. How strange those ways were! And very rarely were they easy. Almost every step, if not every step, was fraught with perplexity. But God was governed in all His dealings with Abraham by this one idea and thought: to have a friend, and to bring a man into such a relationship with Himself as to be able to speak of him as "My friend".
You know, of course, that that title and that relationship are peculiarly and especially connected with Abraham. There are some wonderful things said about other men - Moses, Daniel ("O man greatly beloved") - but "My friend" is uniquely Abraham's title. To understand that we have to look again at the way by which Abraham was led and how at last he arrived in the heart of God.
While the whole life of Abraham is required to make up the full inclusiveness of this sublime fellowship, there is little doubt, I think, that comsummately it was bound up with that one incident of which we have just read: the call to offer his son Isaac. Just think what that really meant where Abraham was concerned! Did God call him from Ur of the Chaldees, to leave all and come out, without telling him anything more than that He would lead him to a land? If we knew everything we would see that that was no small step, for there is every reason to believe that Abraham was a prosperous and great man in Ur. Did God lead him out? Did God promise him a son, and then go away and leave him without fulfilling His promise? Did God bind up the whole of his life with that promise and with that son? The very justification of his move from that old country, leaving everything, was focused and centred in that son. Abraham's whole life, the justification of his living at all, and everything in his life, was centred in that son. All the commands and all the guidance of God to Abraham ended in Isaac. Did God so call, so lead, so promise? Did He make Isaac the exclusive vessel of His Divine purpose and the explanation and meaning of all His promises to Abraham, so that Abraham had no alternative to Isaac? Abraham tried an alternative and found that God was not in that. He tried through Ishmael, but found that that was no way through. There was no alternative for his life for God, his knowledge of God, his history with God, but Isaac. Should Isaac not exist his faith would have been in vain, for he had nothing else. God would have failed him, and his life would have been a failure.
