When Michel Angelo was 72 years old he started work on the monumental dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. When Galileo was 74 he published his dialogue concerning two new sciences. When Stradivarius was in his early 90s he fashioned two of his most famous violins. When P.T Barnum was 71 he joined James Bailey to form the Barnum and Bailey Circus. When Abraham was 75 years old God commanded him to leave his home in Haran and move to the land of Canaan. And because of his obedience, because he believed the promises of God, not only did Abraham get mentioned in Hebrews chapter 11 the scripture that Ruth read this morning but we have the nation of Israel as well. But it wasn’t that simple, it didn’t just happen, as a matter of fact even though Abraham lived a long time after the promise was given, he didn’t see it fulfilled. But that didn’t mean that he stopped believing the promise.
When God spoke to Abraham he told him, “I want you to leave your family, your home, everything you have accumulated because I have big plans for you. I am going to make you the father of a great nation.” I’m sure that Abraham’s response must have been “Cool, when will I see this happen.” And the truth was that he was never told when it would happen only that it would happen. Abraham and Sarah, his wife, were childless, it would appear that even when they were younger they were unable to have children and now that they were getting along in years, probable, which had become possible, now had gone to improbable and finally impossible. Abraham the father of a great nation? Abraham wasn’t even the father of single child.
If we pull up a map we can see that this is where Abraham was from, Way down here was Ur of the Chaldeans, and it was from here that Abraham’s father Terah moved his family to go to Canaan but instead settled here in the village of Heran. We don’t know how long Abraham and his family lived in Heran but it was while they were still there that God told him to leave the home that he had established there. Eventually Abraham and his clan settled here in Shechem but God hadn’t revealed that destination in the beginning, all God had said was “Go to the land that I will show you.” Didn’t give him directions on how to get there, didn’t give him a road map or a Fodor’s travel guide, we don’t know that he was a member of the UCA, that would be the Ur Camel Association. All we know is that God told Abraham to go and Abraham went. The story keeps getting better though. Because once Abraham and his household had arrived at Shechem the Lord appeared to him and said “I am going to give this land to your offspring.” Which must have been a surprise to Abraham seeing he didn’t have any offspring, and yet still he believed.
And if you’ve read the book of Genesis you know that for the next twenty years the story continues, Abraham and his wife Sarah move to Egypt during a famine, then they move back to what would come to be known as the promised land, there’s the entire story of how God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins. But still no offspring, but the promise was still there. And then almost twenty five years after that original conversation Sarah conceives, in Australia they would say that Sarah fell pregnant, and considering she was 90 years old it was lucky she didn’t break a hip.
But having a child, although a pretty spectacular feat when both participants are in their nineties still wasn’t the entire promise. The promise was that Abraham would be the father of a great nation, but when he died he had one legit heir, Isaac who had married Rebekah and they would have two children Jacob and Esau. And Abraham was buried in a cave that he had purchased to bury his wife Sarah. Quite a nation huh? And you start to think that maybe the story is over, and yet, if we go through Jacob and Esau and see how Jacob who would come to be known as Israel had 12 sons we think, you know this might work. But a great famine came upon their land and they had to move to Egypt and you think that maybe the story is over, especially when you see their descendants become slaves of the Egyptians. But 400 years down the road a man name Moses leads the slaves out of Egypt and after another forty years of wandering in the wilderness they find their way back to land that God had promised them. But it’s another four hundred years before this group of nomadic tribes becomes a great nation. In total almost 900 years has passed from the promise to the fulfilment of the promise. 900 years, I find it difficult to be kept waiting an hour. 900 years.
Over the past four weeks we’ve been looking at the fruit of the spirit as defined in
Galatians 5:22-23 But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. Here there is no conflict with the law.
We started with love, then joy, last week we looked at the peace that comes when we allow the Holy Spirit to have control over our lives and this week we are looking at the attribute of patience. Now I knew this wouldn’t be an easy message for me, because I’m not always the most patient of people. Anyone here been tied up in the traffic on the Bedford Highway or Hammonds Plains Rd. lately? Nuts isn’t it?
Well I have discovered that when I come down the Hammonds Plains Rd. and I’m heading toward Bedford and the traffic becomes stop and go, no problem. I take a left onto Bedford Hills Rd. and then turn right on Glen Moir, then a left on Basinview, a right on Wimbeledon, right on Douglas right on Meadowbrook, left on Pleasant, right on Rutledge, left onto Bedford St. across Spring right on Division and down to the Bedford Highway, hey it beats sitting in traffic, and if you live on one of those streets I’m sorry.
So when I started working through where I was going with this message, and what story in the Bible would most demonstrate patience I immediately thought of Abraham and how he believed a promise that would take nine hundred years before it would come true. What could possibly make Abraham believe the unbelievable over an unbelievable length of time?
He Knew The Promise Woodrow Wilson said “All things come to him who waits -- provided he knows what he is waiting for.” Although Abraham didn’t always have all the details he knew what the promise was. God had very plainly given him the promise, You will become a great nation. And the only way that Abraham knew what God had promised was that Abraham was listening to God. When you talk to believers about their spiritual walk, the concern they express over and over again is to know the will of God for their lives. And obviously it is a very real concern; if we believe that God is a loving God and that he has our best interest at heart then it would seem likely that the best way to be happy is to follow what God wants for us. But how do we discern the will of God for our lives.
Paul Little made this observation “I was frustrated out of my mind, trying to figure out the will of God. I was doing everything but getting into the presence of God and asking Him to show me.”
Abraham knew the promise because He Knew The Promiser It wasn’t enough that Abraham knew the promise, we are in a season of promises, we just finished the municipal elections and now we have the federal election upon us. Before the next thirty days are done we will have promises coming out of our ears. However, without wanting to sound cynical, actually that’s not really a concern, most of those promises will end up in the same place that “We will get rid of the GST” ended up, unfulfilled and undelivered.
Most people think that politicians are incapable of telling the truth after all it was Napoleon Bonaparte who said “If you wish to be success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.”
But that isn’t the way of God, listen to what the Bible, God’s word says, in Hebrews 6:18 we read So God has given us both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie.
Abraham was patient because he knew the promise and he knew the promiser, and he didn’t try to force God to work in Abraham’s timetable. We need to get over the I want it and I want it now, we live in a world of instant everything instant cereals, instant soup, instant coffee, instant milk, instant credit, instant delivery, instant success books, instant drying glues, instant winners, instant pain relief, instant acid indigestion relief, instant whitening teeth, instant on TV sets, instant hot burners on stoves. Is it any wonder that we demand instant results from God.
Perhaps we need to learn from Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon who said “Never think that God's delays are God's denials. Hold on; Hold fast; Hold out. Patience is genius.” And remember the word of God in Joshua 23:14 Deep in your hearts you know that every promise of the Lord your God has come true. Not a single one has failed!
He Believed The Promise. It wasn’t enough that Abraham knew the Promise and knew the Promiser he had to believe the Promise. In the scripture that was read this morning time and time again it talked about he faith of Abraham. And what is faith? That question was asked and answered in Hebrews 11:1 What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see. Abraham couldn’t see the end result and yet he was able to believe that even if he couldn’t see it and even if he couldn’t understand it, and even if it seemed impossible he was going to believe it.
But it has to be an active faith, B.C. Forbes said “Many a man thinks he is patient when, in reality, he is indifferent.” Abraham could have just drifted along, not denying the promise but never really embracing it, and that wouldn’t have been what God was looking for. When you hear his promises, you need to believe them.
And finally He Acted On The Promise If we go back Hebrews 11:8 It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. It would have been so easy for Abraham to say, “Ok God, if those are your promises then ante up.” I mean if God was God he didn’t need Abraham to pack everything up and move to the land of Canaan. He could have transported Abraham there, and provide a thousand offspring in the blink of an eye but that’s not the way God works.
Often God requires us to demonstrate our faith by our actions. Jesus’ brother James wrote a letter to the early church and in it he speaks about Abraham and this is what he says about him James 2:22 You see, he was trusting God so much that he was willing to do whatever God told him to do. His faith was made complete by what he did—by his actions.
I love that, our faith is made complete by what we do, by our actions. It’s not enough to believe if God has called us to act as well, Thomas Edison said “Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.”
So where are you at? If people were to describe you would they describe you as being a patient person? The word of God says in Galatians 5:22 and 23 that if we are controlled by the Holy Spirit then one of the characteristics that we will exhibit will be patience.
