By Faith, Abraham (Hebrews 11:8-16) With Pastor Andrew Courtis

Well, do turn with me in your Bibles to the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

Our reading this morning will be taken from verse 8, and we'll be reading all the way through to verse 19.

Hebrews chapter 11, verse 8 through to 19.

Hebrews 11:8

The word of the Lord says, By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance, and he went out, not knowing where he was going.

By faith he dwelt in the land of promise, as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, and the heirs with him of the same promise.

For he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged him faithful, who had promised.

Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead were born as many as the stars of the sky in multitude, innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore.

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland, and truly, if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return.

But now they desire a better, that is a heavenly country.

Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promise 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.

Let us pray.

Our loving Lord, we thank you for your word that you have given us.

Thank you for this extended section in Hebrews 11.

I pray that you would help us to understand what you've revealed to us through your Spirit, and give us the eyes that need to see clearly.

Give us ears, unclog them, that we may hear what you have to say and what the Spirit has to say to the church.

And I pray that we apply this so that we be found pleasing to you.

I pray that our Lord Jesus would be exalted on high today, and I pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.

We've all been on trips, journeys, where there is a destination.

I'm not sure what your personality is like exactly when it comes to this, but a lot of people, when they have to go somewhere, do at least like to know some of the details.

A surprise can be fun, but you want to at least know where are we going?

How are we going to get there?

And what's going to happen along the way.

The Christian life is a journey.

There is a final destination, and it is to experience the bliss of glory with the Lord.

But from now until then, we have to go on a journey.

The Lord tells us what the final outcome will be of this journey.

But what he doesn't tell us is all the details along the way.

And that's the hard part of the Christian life, isn't it?

Because sometimes, and if it hasn't happened much, just wait.

Some of you can give this testimony very clearly, the trials will come pouring in.

And you will be left in moments where you will ask all sorts of questions.

Why, Lord?

Why is this happening?

It's one thing to live the life of faith when everything's just working out fine.

But it's another thing to live the life of faith in the midst of a storm, in the midst of hardship.

And it's in these moments that we need to remember that the secret to the life of faith isn't you.

It's not how strong your faith is.

It's simply this in whom is your faith anchored?

And as the people of God, we know the answer to that.

It is in the Lord Jesus Christ and in him alone.

We must look to our Savior.

We must cling to him, hold on to him.

And it is only in this that we are strengthened in the midst of the storm.

We've seen that theme before in Hebrews, in Hebrews 6.

And we see that very clearly in the passage that we're going to be looking at this morning.

Now you know we're in Hebrews 11, and Hebrews 11 contains for us a number of individuals who are listed as examples of lives lived by faith.

But don't forget that the purpose of this passage is not for us to uphold any of these individuals and say, I must go and likewise be like that individual.

The point of this section of scripture is we have a wide variety of characters, and many of them had messed up and messed up badly.

Not one of them were perfect.

But what showed a beautiful demonstration in all of their lives was not what they had done, but it was the faith that they had in God.

And this passage is teaching us that they were able to persevere, they were able to press on, even in difficult moments, they were able to be found pleasing to God because the foundation of their life was faith in the Lord.

The life of faith will look different.

Remember, we learnt last week that if we live the life of faith, the life of faith will be marked by godly worship.

But godly worship can actually result in persecution, and in the case of Abel, death.

The life of faith will involve walking with God, having a genuine relationship with Him.

That was Enoch.

But also the life of faith will also involve waiting, and during that waiting, there will be harassment and difficult.

And that's what we saw in Noah.

But today we're going to look at a character who gets a lot of attention.

You'll notice just by the length of the reading that we looked at today, verses eight all the way to 19, this is all about one man.

Now, his wife is mentioned in there as well, and we'll consider her.

But I want you to see the fixation upon Abraham.

Abraham has a lot of focus in the book of Hebrews.

And there is a very important reason for that.

It's because God had made a covenant with Abraham, and in this promise that God had made with Abraham, there certainly is the promise of blessing.

And this blessing is experienced in the seed of Abraham.

And that, of course, is our Lord Jesus.

And that's what Hebrews is all about.

It's pointing us to him, it's showing us that he's the one that we must adore, he's the one that we must cling to, he's the one that we must love, he's the one that we must consider, he's the one that we must look to.

This is what Hebrews is all about.

But here in the life of Abraham, I want you to note that here is a man who had much failure.

Sometimes I fear that we read the stories of characters in the Bible through, I don't think this is our Sunday school, but I'm just saying this generally through a Sunday school lens.

And what do I mean by that?

Well, we read them as just great little heroes.

We really only learn the good things about these characters, and we have a little moral lesson at the end.

Be like him.

But when you study the life of Abraham, the guy was messed up sometimes, wasn't he?

He was prepared to throw his wife under the bus.

Like this man had done wrong things.

And Sarah, she had done wrong things too.

They were far from a perfect couple.

But I think we can all relate to Abraham.

It doesn't take very long to put the microscope on our own lives, and it won't be very long before the same kind of sins will be exposed.

But what makes Abraham remarkable, what makes him impressive, is not his accomplishments.

It's the faith that he had.

And it's whom that faith was in, and it was in the Lord.

And in this passage, we have a number of just selected events in the life of Abraham, but I want to group them under three headings.

I want us to see that the faith that Abraham had resulted in three beautiful, practical actions in his life.

And these actions were only possible because of the faith that he had in the Lord.

And this is for you and me to grasp.

This is for you and me to take and apply and live with earnestness before the Lord.

What we see in this passage, firstly, in verse eight, is that Abraham had a willing faith.

And because he was willing, he obeyed.

Secondly, because he had faith, we learned that he also had the ability to wait.

And finally, because he had faith, he had the ability to watch, to expect God to do what he promised he would do.

Abraham's faith helped him become willing, it helped him to wait, and it helped him to eagerly watch, to see God act.

And there we have just a beautiful summary of what the Christian life is all about.

But I wonder, as you open your life up before the Lord who knows all and sees all, is your life genuinely a life marked by willingness to obey the Lord?

Is your life marked by patient, gracious, waiting?

In your life is your life of faith marked by a watchfulness that is eager to see God do what he said he would do.

And in the midst of all of that, to then say, and I will live for him.

Well, I want to look at these one at a time, and I pray that the Spirit of God would touch our hearts, would show us areas where we need to confess to the Lord that this is not true of us and walk humbly before him.

But that the Lord would also use this to strengthen you, to encourage you.

Because I know that there are different struggles that different people here have.

There are different trials that you are going through.

And I want to point you to the Lord that Abraham trusted.

And may you find the encouragement that you need as we look to the Lord today.

First of all, a quick word about Abraham.

This man we learn all about in the book of Genesis.

And his story spans from Genesis 11 to 25.

Abel, he's only in the first part of Genesis 4.

Enoch, he just gets three verses in Genesis 5.

Noah, well, he's got a few, doesn't he?

He's got uh Genesis 6 all the way through to the end of chapter 10.

But Abraham, he's got chapters 11 to 25.

A towering figure.

Lots of things are packed into his life.

Lots happen.

And he becomes a significant individual.

In fact, he is known as Father Abraham.

He is the father of this people in whom will come the blessing that the Lord Jesus Christ will bring and provide.

But he starts off as a man who lived in a place called Ur, in modern-day Turkey.

He was a pagan and lived in a pagan city.

But in sovereign grace, God appeared to Abram.

And he issued a call.

I refer you back to Genesis twelve, verses one to three, where we pick up, we read that the Lord had said to Abram, Get out of your country from your family, and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you.

I will make you a great nation.

I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Could you imagine being Abram's wife?

And hearing this when he comes home.

Pack up everything now and we're leaving.

Where?

I don't know.

When?

Now that that's maddening.

Like that just doesn't make sense.

But what's actually rather incredible is Sarah goes.

They trusted the Lord.

Now we don't have every intricate detail of that.

I just read what we know.

But God told Abram to go.

And what we learn in Hebrews 11 and verse 8 is our first point.

Abraham was willing to obey.

Why was he willing to obey?

Why was he willing to pack up, leave his family, leave what is familiar, leave what is secure, and go.

We all know what it is to leave familiar things.

It's hard.

I found it really hard leaving the city that I knew, which is only one hour away by a flight, ten hours by a drive.

Found it hard to leave family, found it hard to leave friends.

But that's only just one state, and I can go back anytime.

Some of you have had it a lot harder.

You've moved countries, you've had to say goodbye to family and friends.

Some of you are going to have to do that.

Saying goodbye to what you know, to what is familiar is hard.

But this was even harder.

He had to go to a place that he didn't know.

He didn't have all the details, he wasn't given all the comforts that we might have.

There were no aeroplanes to go back.

This is significant.

Why would he be so willing to obey?

It's because he had faith.

Faith responds to what God reveals with trust.

And only true faith is able to make us willing to obey.

His obedience was the fruit of faith.

It was the result of faith.

Abraham trusted the Lord.

And the text tells us in Hebrews 11 and verse 8: look at it, the words, by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance.

And he went out, not knowing where he was going.

He trusted the Lord.

True faith in the Lord clings to him, relies on him.

And when we truly trust in the Lord, faith helps us obey.

Are you struggling to obey the Lord with something right now?

My answer to you in your struggle isn't just obey.

My counsel to you is learn to trust the Lord.

Rely on Him.

Lean on Him.

And if you are going to trust in the Lord, you're going to lean into Him, hold on to Him, then that is what gives you the ability to obey.

Now maybe there is someone here who needs to hear the message that God is stirring you up to go somewhere, and it's going to be really uncomfortable.

You're going to have to leave what you know.

You're going to have to leave that which is familiar.

Maybe there is someone here that the Lord is stirring in your heart.

Maybe that has to do with missions.

Maybe that has to do with ministry.

Maybe it has to do with just another area of calling that will be pleasing to the Lord.

And you're afraid.

You're afraid because this is going to be uncomfortable.

It's unsettling.

And there's going to be so many unknowns.

Friend.

Trust in the Lord.

Have faith in Him.

Remember what faith is.

You accept what God has said.

You acknowledge it.

You believe what He has said to be true.

And you can commit to it.

You trust Him.

But maybe you aren't someone who needs to go somewhere.

But I wonder if you have to go somewhere just in your own life, in the sense that are there things that God's word's telling you to do and you're not doing it?

Are there areas of your life that aren't in submission to the Lordship of Christ?

Are there areas of your life where you are living according to your own preferences and you are not submitting to the Lordship of Jesus?

Is there an area in your marriage that you are not obeying when the Lord says, do This is there an area in your private walk that you're not doing when the Lord says do this?

Is there something in your work that you're not doing when the Lord says do this?

Is there an area of your life that the Spirit of God turns the spotlight on and shows you and says, I call on you to do this?

Where does God tell you to do it?

In his word.

This is the voice of God.

And God is telling us all to do something.

Are you obeying?

Well, by faith, Abraham obeyed.

And obeying God will mean sacrifice.

It might just mean we have to sacrifice our own preferences.

It might mean we have to sacrifice the pleasures that have so gripped our hearts.

It actually may mean we have to sacrifice security.

Whatever it is, the life of faith will always result in obedience.

And obedience will always have a cost.

But know that the value of obeying God is of greater value than the things that you're doing that are not obedient to Him.

All those other things may give you temporary value, temporary pleasure, temporary happiness.

Abraham could have said, No, Lord, I'm gonna just stay in Ur.

This is where it's happening.

Ur is the place, Ur is the coolest place in the world.

And he would have missed out on that future city that has foundations.

God said to Abraham, Go, go to the place that I tell you, I will make your name great, I will do these things.

And I just love the fact that Abraham trusted the Lord, and that trust resulted in obedience.

Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey.

True faith in the Lord Jesus Christ will help us obey.

But we learn, secondly, that Abraham not only by means of his faith was able to be willing to obey, but Abraham by means of his faith was willing to wait.

This is where it gets really hard.

Because you obey, but then in the obedience, things don't seem to go your way.

Maybe you actually thought the moment I just obey the Lord, then all of a sudden the lights are gonna go on everywhere, everything's just gonna line up.

Um, it's it's just gonna be great, it's gonna be easy sailing.

But all of a sudden, Abraham goes with this promise.

Abraham, I'm gonna give you this land, I'm gonna make your name great, and you are going to have a multitude of descendants.

And so this 75-year-old goes, and as he goes, the months pass, the years pass, and all of a sudden, people go saying, Hey, I heard that your name's been changed.

You've got this name that carries the idea that you're father of many nations.

How many kids do you have, Abraham?

None.

What you you left Ur so that you'd have a great name?

And so that the nations would be blessed.

And how many kids have you got?

Well, he obeyed, but that obedience didn't result in an immediate outcome.

He had to wait.

And I want you to see two things that he had to wait for.

First of all, he had to wait for the descendant, and secondly, he had to wait for the destination.

Just quickly jump down to uh verses eleven and twelve, and and we'll see, first of all, he had to wait for the descendant.

We see here the words, by faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed.

And she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged him faithful, who had promised.

Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead were born as many as the stars of the sky and multitude, innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore.

Now, we're quickly going over so many details in the story of Genesis, but what we need to understand here is at this moment of time, Abraham was 99 years old.

Sarah was 90.

Too old to have kids.

The possibility of the child of promise looked like an absolute impossibility.

Nothing had happened.

And when God promised them, no, you are gonna have a child.

You remember Sarah's initial response?

What did she do?

She bowed down and said, We're gonna have a prayer meeting now and give thanks to the Lord for his covenant faithfulness.

She was godly, just like all of us, wasn't she?

No.

She laughed.

She just laughed at the prospect.

You serious?

I'm 90.

This ain't gonna happen.

I am past the ability to do it.

She had been barren her whole life, but it's just not gonna happen now.

I'm 90.

Yet some people will rightly point out Sarah was not a good example of faith because she just laughed at the Lord.

But why does the text say in verse 11, by faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive?

Well, in just delicate language, let's just at least acknowledge this.

When God said to this 90-year-old woman and to this 99-year-old man, You are going to conceive, and they laughed at it, the fact that she conceived meant that they actually had relations, which was an act of faith.

And I just want you to see here is that as weak as they were, even in their skepticism, they were still willing to trust God.

It's beautiful.

And later on, you learn that she conceives, as the text says, and of course, this is by God's sovereign superintendence, and she does bear this child, Isaac, and then we learn later on in the book of Genesis, she laughs again when he's born, but this time with joy.

The laughter of skepticism had turned into a laughter of joy.

And how many times have you done that in your life where the word of God says something and you don't obey or you question it?

And then later on, God, in his kindness, in his patience and tenderness, brings you through a series of events in which you mess a whole lot of things up along the way, but in the end, his faithfulness just shines forth, and then you kind of laugh and you're like, I should have just trusted the Lord the whole time.

Can you relate to that?

That was Abraham and Sarah.

And I want you to know that in between all of that, they tried to take things into their own hands, they used their own methods, they used their own tactics.

He agreed to sleep with her Egyptian handmaid, and all of these attempts that they did to try to accomplish God's plan just blew up in their faces and brought scars and difficulties into their life if they only just trusted the Lord.

Our life will often be marked by mixed faith and also mixed independence.

We trust the Lord, but we try to fix things ourselves along the way.

And every time without fail, our man-made efforts, our disobedience to the word of God, whatever it is, whether it be big issues of life or whether it just be the moments of difficulty we're in, when we take things our way, when we fight with worldly weapons, when we use worldly approaches, when we use the wisdom of man, when we use our own genius, we will mess things up.

I promise you.

Just look back at your life.

You know you've done it.

I know I've done it.

We've all got the t-shirts, got our name on it.

And you'll do it again.

I'll do it again.

And this reminds us that the blessing is not ever seen in our efforts, it's seen in the one that we're trusting.

So Abraham and Sarah, they had to wait a long time, and their waiting wasn't perfect.

But at the end of the day, they did actually trust God.

And God blessed them.

And they did conceive, and little Isaac was born, and this was the Son of Promise.

God was doing his plan.

But again, it's not the way they would have thought because this just doesn't really look like innumerable stars, it doesn't look like a multitude of nations.

How is that gonna happen?

But it's what God said would happen.

Secondly, they not only waited for a descendant, they waited for the destination.

Here we go back to verses 9 and 10, and then verses 13 to 16.

Consider these verses.

By faith he dwelt in the land of promise, as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.

For he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

Verse 13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were assured of them, embraced and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland.

And truly, if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return.

But now they desire a better, that is a heavenly country.

Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

In sum, what this is telling us is that God promised them a land, and even though they made it to the land, they didn't inherit the promises.

And we're told that Abraham and Jacob and Isaac, they lived nomad lives.

They were wandering around, they were having to constantly pitch tents.

God made this glorious promise, Abraham, I'm gonna give you this land, I'm gonna make your name great.

There is going to be a multitude of descendants, more than the eye can count.

If you look at the stars, count them.

You'll have more than that.

Look at the grains of the sand of the sea, you'll have more than that in descendants.

And you look at his life in all these years, just wondering.

He lives to 175, and he he never sees all this.

All they ever did was live in tents.

But notice what verse 10 says.

It's the key verse in this section.

For he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

Abraham lived in a city that didn't have foundations, it had tent peaks.

But Abraham was looking beyond the physical land.

He was looking for a city beyond that.

He was looking for a city that God is the maker and architect of.

What is the city that Abraham was looking for?

Go over to chapter 12, and we'll look at this closely when we get to it.

But go over to chapter 12, and you'll see in verses 22 to 23 what this city is.

We read, But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels registered in heaven, to God, the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect.

There we have an innumerable crowd in a heavenly city.

Go over to chapter 13, and we read this in our call to worship, and we see the beauty of this description.

In verse 14, we're told, For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come.

What is this city that is to come?

Well, again, go back to Hebrews 11, and I want you to see carefully these words in verse 16.

But now they desire a better, that is a heavenly country.

Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

What city was God preparing for Abraham?

Abraham looked past the physical land that he saw.

He looked past that and he was looking for a heavenly city.

And the writer to Hebrews is telling us that it's a heavenly one in which there will be an innumerable host there.

What is this city that God is preparing?

Remember what our Lord Jesus said in John 14.

In my father's house are many dwelling places I go to prepare a place for you.

And go over to the book of Revelation, and we see in Revelation 21 just this beautiful description in Revelation 21 and verse 1, and I'll just skip a few verses, but verse 1, now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no more sea than I, John, saw.

What did you see, John?

Tell us.

The holy city, New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.

Note, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people.

God himself will be with them, and they will be, and he will be their God.

God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, there shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.

Then he who sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.

And he said to me, Write, for these words are true and faithful.

Jump down to a verse.

I will go over to verse twenty-two.

This is the description of that city.

But I saw no temple in it.

Why?

For the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

The city had no need of sun nor for the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it.

The Lamb is its light, and the nations of those who are saved walk into its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it.

Its gates shall not be shut at all by day, for there shall be no night there, and they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it.

But there shall be by no means enter anything that defiles nor causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.

That glorious city is what Christ is preparing.

And this city will have nations in it.

And God promised Abraham that I will bless you, and through you, through your seed, the nations will be blessed.

How on earth was all that gonna ever happen?

Well, I just want you to know I have to quit at this point.

We'll pick up next time on my final point, which is his watching.

But I want to finish with this.

The answer is found in what's anticipated, in what God then tests Abraham to do.

He wants him to sacrifice his son, his only son, Isaac.

And let me just say this in conclusion, but also in anticipation of what we'll see next time.

We learn, according to Galatians 3, that the seed with a capital S of Abraham is the Lord Jesus Christ.

And the Lord Jesus told his disciples to do something very powerful.

In Matthew 28, he told them go into all the world and make disciples of the nations.

Disciples of Israel will be made, disciples of Gentile nations will be made.

And you know what's going to happen?

There is going to be a company of those who've been purchased by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ from every tribe, every language, and every nation.

And they will surround the throne of God and they will say, Worthy is the lamb that was slain.

And this morning, as I preach this, I preach it with so much joy because I literally see the foretaste of that in this room.

I see some of the stars that Abraham counted.

And there is more to come.

Let's step back, and what do we see in all of this?

Here we see a man whose life was marked by faith.

But that faith helped him obey even when it would cost him.

And it helped him wait even when it was hard.

Did he obey perfectly and did he wait perfectly?

Definitely not.

But remember, the difference between a little bit of faith and no faith, as Spurgeon reminds us, there's a chasm of difference.

Are you holding on to Christ?

Well, it's only in him that we are able to obey, and it's only in him that we're able to wait.

And I want to encourage you, it's worth doing it.

So may the Spirit of God impress upon our hearts the truths of the Word of God that we have seen today.

And where there are areas of our life that we all need to be strengthened in, may He help us.

But where there are areas of our life where we are dishonoring him and we're not pleasing our Lord Jesus, I pray that the Spirit of God would impress that on all of our hearts, that we would submit to him.

Let us pray.

Our loving and gracious Lord, I thank you for your word.

Our Lord, as we quieten our hearts now and prepare ourselves for the warmth of your table, I pray that our eyes would be firmly fixed upon our dear Savior.

Be with Pastor Dean as he leads us.

Work in our hearts now.

And we thank you in Christ's name.

Amen.