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By Faith, Abraham
In the eleventh chapter of the New Testament book of Hebrews there is one of the most famous lists in all of history.
It is a list of Bible heroes.
Big names like Noah and Moses,
Samson and David.
And there was some lesser known people like Enoch and Rahab,
Barak and Jephthah.
Now What was it that held all of these Biblical characters together?
What was it about these individuals that put them on this particular list?
It was their faith.
Each of these men and women were heroes of faith.
Therefore the chapter is referred to as the faith chapter.
You know Probably one of the premier people on this list though,
Is a man who takes up six of the forty verses,
a man by the name of Abraham.
If you have your bibles with you today turn to the book of Hebrews 11 where we will be reading just select verses today
8 By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. 9 By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: 10 For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
Then down to verses17-19
17 By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, 18 Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: 19 Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.
You know As we think of examples of great faith, through all of Scripture there is none that sticks out in our minds above the example of Abraham.
His life was characterized by faith.
Think about it,
when we first find Abraham he is called by God to get up and leave everything he has ever known.
God tells him to leave his family.
He tells him to leave his friends,
the comforts of his home,
and the acquaintance of his culture.
Now, there have been many who have been called by God to do the same thing.
I mean Every missionary that is serving on a foreign field somewhere tonight has been called to leave family, friends, comfort, and familiarity behind to fulfill God’s will for their life.
And I think we can all appreciate the amount of faith that it takes to do that.
So what sets Abraham apart from all those others who have also answered the call?
Why is that when so many others have done the same thing, that Abraham is regarded so highly for his willingness to step out on faith?
I believe it’s because He was willing to step out without having any idea of where he was going.
Now, again, a lot of people have done that same sort of thing as well
When I answered God’s call to ministry in my life I didn’t know where I’d end up.
And I still don’t know where I’ll preach my last sermon at
I know where I’d like to and that is right here at maple street
but I don’t know the road ahead.
A Lot of people have answered God’s call without really knowing where they’d end up.
But I think the difference is that I didn’t literally pack my bags and hit the road still not knowing where I was going.
But Abraham did.
He got up and left family, friends, home, and culture without having the slightest idea of where he was supposed to go.
He had to have faith that God was going to lead him.
He had to blindly follow.
And he did.
He did it all at the ripe old age of 75 years old
You know That’s amazing.
That’s incredible.
That took a great amount of faith.
But that wasn’t the only trial of abrahams faith.
The Bible tells us that he believed God concerning His promise to give him many descendents.
That He lived in tents as a foreigner in a land occupied by many others believing that this land would one day be given to him and his descendents by God.
But then, what I believe to be Abraham’s greatest trial of faith came.
Abraham had believed that God would give him an heir even to old age.
And then when He was 100 years old and his wife, Sarah was 90 years old the promised child was finally born.
He had had faith that God would give him a son, and God had done so.
But then God did something kind of shocking
He asked Abraham to do something unspeakable.
He asked him to take that promised son, Isaac, and sacrifice him on an altar to God.
How could God ask him to do such a thing?
How could He take away something that Abraham had waited so long for?
How could He ask him to kill his own son?
But you know what?
Hebrews 11:17-18 says,
17 By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, 18 Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called:
Abraham was willing to offer up Isaac as a sacrifice to God,
even when this was the child that God had promised to use in raising up a great nation.
You know That took some serious faith.
That took mind-blowing faith.
That’s faith that I don’t think many of us have.
That’s faith that stands out in the list.
This evening I want to talk with you about Abraham’s faith.
In all of these circumstances of Abraham’s life I believe that we can see a trend.
As we’ve already noticed there is a great trend of faith.
But I believe that if we look a little closer we can see what it really is that proves Abraham’s faith.
What is this evidence of faith?
I believe it’s obedience.
A.W. Tozer said, “The Bible recognizes no faith that does not lead to obedience, nor does it recognize any obedience that does not spring from faith. The two are opposite sides of the same coin.”
Think about it,
would we be hearing about Abraham’s great faith in God had he not actually packed his bags and left his family like God told him to?
Would we see Abraham’s name on this great list in Hebrews 11 if he hadn’t obeyed God’s command for his side of the covenant by circumcising every male?
Would we consider Abraham to be such a fantastic example of faith if he had not walked Isaac up that mountain and laid him on that altar?
No we wouldn't
Why?
Because faith is more than just saying you believe.
Faith is acting upon your belief.
Faith is evidenced by obedience.
The two go hand in hand.
This evening, I think we can look at Abraham’s story and see three things about his obedience that really spoke to his faith.
These are three things upon that I think you and I can also measure our own faith.
Let me talk with you for just a few minutes about Abraham’s obedient faith.
First of all, Abraham’s faith caused him to obey immediately.
Let’s look at each of the three cases that I’ve already mentioned.
First of all, when God called Abraham to leave his family he did so immediately.
We can see this in Genesis 12 verses 1-4
1 Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: 2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: 3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. 4 So Abram departed, as the LORD had spoken unto him;
John Wesley said, Abraham “was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. His obedience was speedy and without delay.”
Everything in the wording of this scripture directs us to believe that Abraham acted immediately upon God’s call to leave.
No where does it hint that he waited around for the weather to get better.
No where does it hint that he waited for the crops to come in.
No where does it hint that he waited until they could get a big family reunion party completed before he left.
No Everything points to a rapid departure.
Let’s look at the second trial of his faith that we mentioned.
Genesis 17 says,
1 And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. 2 And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly. 3 And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying, 4 As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. 5 Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. 6 And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. 7 And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. 8 And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.
9 And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations. 10 This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised. 11 And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.
Then down to verse 23 it says
23 And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s house; and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the selfsame day, as God had said unto him
The very day that God made this covenant with Abraham,
the very day that He gave His promise,
the very day that He showed Abraham what the sign of that covenant would be, Abraham did exactly what God had told him to do.
Nowhere do we see a hint that he waited till he could convince everyone that this was the thing to do.
Nowhere do we find any hint that he waited till he could build up his own courage to go through the painful process of circumcision.
No The Bible plainly tells us that the very same day that Abraham and God had their conversation, Abraham did what God told him to do.
Later, in chapter 22, we find the story of Abraham’s offering of Isaac.
1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. 2 And he said, Take now thy son, 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.3 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.
God talked with Abraham one day, or one night as I believe and he tells him that he must go to a certain mountain and offer his son as a sacrifice there.
And the Bible tells us that the very next morning Abraham gathered everything he needed for the trip and headed out with his son.
Now, if anyone had any right to hesitate in their obedience it was Abraham.
Here he was, a man over 100 years old,
finally the father of his promised heir,
and now God told him to kill that son?
Now I believe if I was him that I probably would have tried my best to obey God,
but I would have at least delayed that obedience as long as I could.
I would have spent as much time as I could have with my son before I headed for the
Mountain
But nowhere does it say that Abraham delayed.
Nowhere does Scripture imply that he put it off so that he could spend some precious last days or weeks with his son.
Nowhere does it hint that he waited any length of time.
On the contrary the Bible tells us that he obeyed immediately.
I read about a father who had the hardest time getting his son to clean his room.
The son would always agree to tidy up, but then wouldn’t follow through.
After high school the young man joined the Marine Corps.
When he came home for leave after basic training, his father asked him what he had learned in the service.
“Dad,” he said. “I learned what ‘now’ means.”
Thomas a Kempis said, “Instant obedience is the only kind of obedience there is; delayed obedience is disobedience.”
But think about it how many times have we felt God leading us to do something, and maybe we’ve agreed that we would do it,
but we have put it off and put it off?
How many times have we been guilty of hesitating in our obedience?
How often is our obedience delayed?
When we delay in our obedience, we are actually disobeying.
You see God desires and God requires instant obedience.
He, as our Father, desires that we, as His children, will not delay in following His leadership.
And if we truly are people of faith, then that faith should cause us to obey immediately.
The second principle that I think we can see in the life of Abraham is that faith causes us to obey unquestioningly.
Again, let’s look at these three cases.
When God called Abraham to leave his family
his friends
and his home behind,
not once do we ever see him saying, “Why?”
Never once does he start questioning God’s reasons for taking Him up out of his comfort zone and sending him out on some blind voyage.
Never once does he give some sort of excuse for why he doesn’t think it’s such a good idea.
No, he simply gets up and leaves.
He packs all of his stuff,
takes his wife,
his nephew,
and all their belongings,
and he heads out.
In the instance of God and Abraham’s covenant,
we don’t see Abraham questioning God there either.
You Circumcision would have definitely been a painful task,
especially in those days,
and especially for a 99 year old man.
That would have been a major inconvenience
and probably a fairly traumatic event for Abraham.
But not once do we see him complaining to God.
not once do we see him filling God in on all the pains and trauma He was putting him through.
Not once do we see him trying to see if there was another way for that covenant to be sealed.
No He just simply, without a word,
without a question, does what God told him to do.
What about when God told him to offer Isaac as a sacrifice?
You’d better believe that most of us would probably have argued with God on this one
You want me to kill my own son?
You want me to actually tie my son up,
lay him down on a stone altar,
slay him like he was a goat,
and then burn his flesh?
What kind of God are you?”
Maybe we wouldn’t be so defiant in our answer,
And well maybe we would
but to say the least it would be extremely difficult not to question God on this one.
“God, this is the son who you promised me.
This is the boy that I waited 100 years for.
This is the one who you said would carry on my bloodline.
This was the child that was to be my heir and one of the fathers of a new, mighty nation.
Are you sure that you want me to kill him?
If so, why did you allow me to have him in the first place?”
On and on Abraham could have gone,
and we probably would have.
But not once does he ever question God.
Not once does he utter a word trying to change God’s mind.
Not once does he ever make any excuses why this isn’t the way things should be done.
In fact, he did everything in his power to keep himself from having any excuses.
He even gathered all the wood before he set out on that fateful journey.
He never questioned God.
He just simply rose speechless to the call of God.
He was obedient without guest ion
You and I are so different, aren’t we?
We always have to have a good reason why we’re supposed to do what we do.
I still remember time after time that my mom told me to do something,
and I always demanded to know why I had to do that.
A lot of times I didn’t get the answer I wanted.
Most of the time I got, “Because I said so.”
But I always questioned.
And if the answer wasn’t good enough I always tried to point out that it wasn’t.
I always had to demand a good reason for a command.
And we all have done it.
Sometimes we still do it.
It doesn’t matter if God comes out in Scripture and very plainly says,
“Take up your cross and follow me.”
We always have to have a good reason why we should do that.
“I mean, after all, if I’m going to sacrifice,
I need to be doing it for a good reason, right?”
Or maybe we question God’s call to go into all the world and preach the Gospel.
We make all sorts of excuses why we shouldn’t have to leave our comfort zones.
On and on we go,
demanding answers for every little command and call that God makes to us.
But can you imagine what would happen if Christians just sucked it up and obeyed without question?
A few centuries before Christ a man referred to as Alexander the Great conquered almost all of the known world using military strength, cleverness, and a bit of diplomacy.
The story is told that Alexander and a small company of soldiers approached a strongly fortified walled city.
Alexander, standing outside the walls, raised his voice and demanded to see the king. When the king arrived, Alexander insisted that the king surrender the city and its inhabitants to Alexander and his little band of fighting men.
The king laughed, “Why should I surrender to you?
You can’t do us any harm!”
But Alexander offered to give the king a demonstration.
He ordered his men to line up single file and start marching. He marched them straight toward a sheer cliff.
The townspeople gathered on the wall and watched in shocked silence as, one by one, Alexander’s soldiers marched without hesitation right off the cliff to their deaths!
After ten soldiers died, Alexander ordered the rest of the men to return to his side.
The townspeople and the king immediately surrendered to Alexander the Great. They realized that if a few men were actually willing to commit suicide at the command of this dynamic leader, then nothing could stop his eventual victory.
Can you imagine all the good we could do for God if we would just do as He tells us to, instead of making excuses
and demanding reasons
and offering “better” ideas?
God’s kingdom would be growing at an enormous rate.
But you know, this kind of obedience can’t just be attained.
you don't just decide that you’re not going to ask any more questions.
Those men probably wouldn’t have walked off of that cliff to their deaths just because they had decided they’d better not ask any questions.
They believed in Alexander.
They believed in his cause and in who he was and what he stood for.
They had faith in him.
You see, the kind of unquestioning obedience that Abraham had,
and that you and I should have,
only comes from a complete faith in God and in His promises.
And that is my next point.
Faith causes us to obey confidently.
When Hudson Taylor went to China, he made the voyage on a sailing vessel.
As it neared the channel between the southern Malay Peninsula and the island of Sumatra, the missionary heard an urgent knock on his stateroom door.
He opened it, and there stood the captain of the ship.
“Mr. Taylor,” he said, “we have no wind.
We are drifting toward an island where the people are heathen, and I fear they are cannibals.”
“What can I do?” asked Taylor. “I understand that you believe in God.
I want you to pray for wind.”
“All right, Captain, I will, but you must set the sail.”
“Why that’s ridiculous! There’s not even the slightest breeze.
Besides, the sailors will think I’m crazy.”
But finally, because of Taylor’s insistence, he agreed.
Forty-five minutes later he returned and found the missionary still on his knees.
“You can stop praying now,” said the captain.
“We’ve got more wind than we know what to do with!”
That captain had to learn that faith causes obedience because true faith is confident in its object.
Abraham’s faith caused him to be able to obey God immediately and unquestioningly, knowing that God’s word could be trusted.
In the first case, God had promised that if Abraham left his family and home behind that he would make a great nation out of him.
He had promised that if he obeyed He would bless him and make him famous.
He had promised that every nation would be blessed through Abraham if he only obeyed him.
So, being a man of faith, he was able to step away from everything he ever knew, confident that God was going to stay true to His promises.
He didn’t doubt God.
If he had doubted God, he probably wouldn’t have left immediately;
he probably would have asked some questions and demanded some answers.
But he believed God.
He had confidence in Him.
In the case of the covenant that God made with him:
God had promised that the land of Canaan would be his descendant’s land one day. He had promised that through him there would be many descendants.
And Abraham believed Him.
Why else would he submit himself to the pain of circumcision at such an old age if he didn’t believe that the covenant was sure?
He believed God.
He knew God would come through.
What about in the case of the sacrifice of Isaac?
Well again I like what the writer of Hebrews says…
17 By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, 18 Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: 19 Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.
Abraham walked Isaac to that mountain of sacrifice immediately and unquestioningly because he was confident in God’s promises.
God had promised that it would be through Isaac that this new nation would rise up. God had promised that Isaac would be his heir.
And Abraham believed so completely in that promise that he was willing to actually lay his son on an altar and kill him,
knowing that God would keep His word,
even if it meant raising Isaac from the dead.
When a traveler in the early days of the west, came to the Mississippi, he discovered there was no bridge.
Fortunately it was winter and the great river was sheeted over with ice.
But the traveler was afraid to trust himself to it, not knowing how thick it was.
Finally with infinite caution, he crept on his hands and knees and managed to get halfway over.
And then he heard singing from behind.
Cautiously he turned, and there, out of the dusk,
came another traveler, driving a four-horse load of coal over the ice, singing as he went!
J. G. Machen said, “The more we know of God, the more unreservedly we will trust him; the greater our progress in theology, the simpler and more childlike will be our faith.”
Listen guys this evening, you can obey God the same way Abraham did because He knew that God always keeps His word.
And the longer you walk with God the more you see that to be true,
and the greater your confidence will grow.
That carriage driver had confidence on that frozen river because he had been there before.
He knew that ice was solid.
Abraham was confident in God because He’d never backed up on His word before.
And he knew that he wouldn't start now
During one of the World Wars, a father, holding his small son by the hand, ran from a building that had been struck by a bomb.
In the front yard was a shell hole.
Seeking shelter as quickly as possible, the father jumped into the hole and held up his arms for his son to follow.
Terrified, yet hearing his father’s voice telling him to jump, the boy replied, “I can’t see you!”
The father, looking up against the sky tinted red by the burning buildings, called to the silhouette of his son, “But I can see you. Jump!”
And the boy did.
He was able to obey his father with confidence because he had learned to trust him.
Let me ask you, how many times has God let you down before?
How often has He destroyed your confidence in Him?
How many times has He backed up on His word?
He never has.
So you can obey Him,
even when you don’t completely understand His call,
because you’ve been there before and you know that He stays true to His promises.
You can obey Him with complete confidence
Looking back now, we understand that Abraham’s confidence and faith that led to obedience was well founded.
Everything that God promised came to pass.
Abraham did become famous.
Abraham did father a great nation.
That nation did come through Isaac.
That nation was blessed.
And through Abraham’s descendent, Jesus, all nations were blessed.
Abraham had reason, good reason, to be confident, and to obey confidently.
You too, even though you may not see the future
which, by the way, Abraham didn’t either,
you can obey confidently as well, knowing that God will always keep His promises.
You know there is a lot that we can learn from Abraham.
But one of the greatest things we can learn from Abraham is how to be a people of faith.
And we learn through the life of Abraham that true faith always produces obedience.
Without obedience we cannot say that we have faith.
But With obedience our faith comes alive.
And true faith will cause that obedience to be immediate,
unquestioning,
and confident.
