If you have a Bible, let me return with me to Hebrews chapter 11. Once again this evening, we're in the Hall of Faith, and we're turning to the faith of Abraham, the writer in chapter 11 actually spends more time on Abraham than anyone else. Why? Well, because Abraham is the father of the faithful, we might say, the father of believers.
He's the illustration of what it looks like to live a life of faith in the Messiah in Jesus Christ. Because that's what he did. Jesus said in the Gospel of John that Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad. He saw it with the eyes of faith.
The Apostle Paul tells us elsewhere that it is not Jews by physical birth that are Abraham's descendants. Instead he says it is those who are of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And so he says if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. And so may God help us to learn the faith of Abraham and may he grant us to share in it.
And so let me invite you to consider, and God's word from Hebrews chapter 11 verses 8 through 10. By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith, he went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.
For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations whose designer and builder is God. Amen. This is God's word and he write it on our hearts. Let's look at him in prayer.
Our Father, we ask that you would bless us, speak your word to us, help us to see and understand and share the same hope of Abraham. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. There was a Christian pastor, Mark Ashton, who is Victor of St.
Andrew the Great in Cambridge. And he died on Easter Sunday or Saturday in 2010 at the age of 62. He wrote the following words to his congregation, the previous Easter in 2009. This is what he wrote to his church family.
He says, I have a life expectancy of between one and two years. I'm sorry for the pain and inconvenience that my death may cause. And I have great sorrow at the breaking of so many precious human relationships. But behind all the relationships of my life stands one relationship.
It is the relationship with God which has given me all the other relationships. The prospect of losing them for the sake of seeing him is one that fills me with longing. My family's real need is for your faith more than for your sympathy. Please believe for us that the gospel is true and that I really have received the sentence of life rather than death.
Something that is a beginning and not an end. How did he face the prospect of death fixing his eyes on Jesus and on a greater hope? That's how we're called to live. That's actually the life that Abraham lived.
And he lived it by faith. So I want you to see the saving faith of Abraham from this passage in three parts. And I want you to see in verse eight that by faith Abraham, well, he left. And then in verse nine by faith how he lived and then in verse 10 by faith what he longed for.
Notice in the first place by faith he left. Verse eight by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive his inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going. He obeyed by faith.
Now you remember this call came to him in Genesis chapter 12. Genesis 12, one to four very famously you remember that the Lord said to Abraham, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And then in verses two and three of Genesis 12 God made him all kinds of fabulous promises. And then it concludes with these words in verse four.
So Abraham went as the Lord had told him. The Lord said, I want you to go. Leave what represents your security. Leave what behind your country, your people, your family, your home, leave, go.
And that's what Abraham did. He didn't know the particular land that the Lord was going to give to him but he obeyed and he went. And you may remember before he went, who was he? So God called Abraham when he lived in Ur of the Chaldis in ancient Mesopotamia.
What is today a portion of Iraq and Eastern Syria? It was a very culturally advanced place between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It was a, well he was a pagan in a pagan city. Descented from a line of idolaters.
And he was a rich man based on excavations of archeological sites from that period. It's very likely he lived in a double story house that had a lobby, a courtyard, kitchen, bathroom bedrooms and reception rooms. Those are the kinds of homes people lived in in those days. He lived in a culture where there was trade and literature and mathematics and astronomy, a very highly developed culture.
So when God called him to leave his family and his place and his home and his culture, he called him to leave something that was very precious. It was a big call to leave. And notice it was not his idea to move to Canaan. He was not following his own dream.
He was following God's call. God's call was primary and his obedience was a response. So the emphasis of the writer is on that. That saving faith is accompanied by obedience to God's command.
He believed in the promise of the Messiah he was given. He trusted God in his promises and God's plans. And he acted on it. And he went.
And so one of the things we see in the life of Abraham is that we are saved by faith alone, but saving faith is never alone. In its very nature, it results in, it's productive of obedience. Abraham wasn't saved by his obedience. He was an idolatateer when God found him.
A grace brought him to faith and as Calvin says, obedience flows from faith like water from a fountain. Or as A.W. Pink says, obedience is faith's daughter. And we see more about this faith of Abraham.
It was a very demanding but very undeteriled call to obedience. He didn't know where he was to go when he left. He just knew he should go and God would show him. And in principle, that call on Abraham is the same call.
Jesus puts on us his disciples. That is, you may remember in Mark chapter 10, Jesus says, whoever loves father or mother, whoever loves son or daughter, more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. That is Jesus demands supreme affection in our life.
That's what he said to Abraham, leave everything. And go where I tell you to go. And so as one rightly said, the first duty of every soul is to fight not its freedom, but its master. And Abraham showed that he was a submissive servant to his master, the Lord.
And so it just invites us to reflect, who tells you what to do? And do you do it? Who calls you? Who commands you?
Who have you given the right to call and command you and argue, evidencing the kind of faith that does what God tells you to do? The Christian faith, the response of saving faith says to the Lord, Lord, I will go where you want me to go and I'll do what you want me to do and I'll say what you want me to say and I'll give away what you want me to give away. Jesus of course, in telling us we have to love him above father or mother or sons or daughters. And so we didn't mean we should despise our families.
Abraham didn't despise his family when he left his father's house. The Bible actually commands us to honor our families. But it did mean that his closest relatives and it means even our closest relatives can't stand between us and him that we have to follow him above all others. And sometimes even in Christian's home, Christian homes, we face the kinds of subtle pressures to or even direct pressure to not follow Christ.
Sometimes in Christian homes, even Christian parents don't want their children to grow up to be missionaries on the far side of the world because they want them and their grandchildren to be nearby and they put pressure on them. Don't go. Don't leave. Don't follow the Lord's leading in your life.
When God spoke to Abraham, he listened and when God promised he trusted and when God commanded he obey and so he left. He left father and he left his home. And of course it was lacking in detail. He didn't know where he was supposed to go.
He just knew that he was to follow the Lord. And that may be the case in your life. I don't know what the Lord is calling you to do. Personally that is.
We know we have the revealed will of God. You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength of mind and love your neighbor as yourself. And we know as Christians, our first confession is and I haven't done that Lord. Forgive me.
Pardon me for not. But having been pardoned, our heart says, oh, make it so. Oh, help me to love you and help me to love others. And so we have that command.
Are we following that command? And then of course there's the leading and guiding of God individually and personally in our lives. And I'm the harder one to know for sure about. Should I stay where I am and continue in the job I'm in and living in the home I'm in and the city I'm in or should I go somewhere else and do something else.
That's a harder one. These are the kinds of things we pray about. We seek counsel from others about and we trust in the Lord even as we make these choices and decisions. But it's clear that God calls us to follow him and following him is not always the easiest thing to do.
Following him invites us at times to leave others that we might walk with him. And that call of Abraham is not just an example for ministers who leave one place to go to another believing the Lord has called them and hearing the call of the church come and serve among us. But that's true for all of us. Hebrews 11 of course isn't calling any of us to go to Israel and start a settlement.
And it's not calling us to never own land or to live in a house or never live in a house. It's not calling us to live in tents like Abraham lived in a tent. Just as we said last time verse 7 isn't calling us to the well like Noah in faith built in Mark. He was 11 and saying you go and do likewise.
But while Abraham had a special and particular call upon his life with a very clear word from the Lord himself and very directly we are all called to follow Jesus and to walk with Jesus. Come what may? And are we? Is the question.
Are we like Abraham a people of saving faith who then obey with the Lord commands? Immersively while none of us can say we've done it perfectly. Our Savior did. He obeyed the voice of the Lord perfectly and for us and for our salvation.
That doesn't that make you want to go where he wants you to go. That's the first thing he left. The second notice how he lived. He didn't get to settle down on the earth verse 9 by faith.
He went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land living in tents with Isaac and Jacob heirs with him of the same promise. This is the only verse in the Bible that refers to Canaan as the promise land. The irony is Abraham, the heir to the promise land, never owned a foot of ground in it except for the cave that he purchased in which to bury his wife Sarah for which he paid full price. And the writer here not only refers to Abraham living in tents but to Isaac and Jacob.
They had this promise and they shared in this promise that God was going to give them the land, the promised land. And yet it remained in the Canaanites' hands and they kept on living in tents even as decade after decade they never owned the land. And it was, well you might say in most days a rather unexciting and impermanent kind of life. You know a lot of believing.
I mean if you've been tent camping you know how impermanent and well in some ways unexciting it can be. There's a lot of drudgery involved in living in a tent. And so there's a lot in the life of believers. Months and years and decades of ordinary time pretty regular stuff, nothing very exceptional, not a lot of miracles.
I mean how do you live in a tent by faith? Ralph Davis says what would you do? You'd set up your tent when you got to a new place. You cooked meals, you got a firewood, you do veterinary work on your animals, you raise your family, you bury your parents, you negotiate for water rights, you watch your teeth decay, you feel arthritis in your joints.
Regular stuff year after year, day after day. Wear and tear over time. That wear and tear over time can cause your hope to diminish. It's a time of waiting.
It's a time of persevering. A time of not yet seeing what is ultimately promised. So we have to just remind ourselves that's the normal Christian life. And we have to ask ourselves can we take that kind of Christian experience if that's what God gives to us.
And remind ourselves that we don't live in a world that likes that at all. We live in an entertainment world. We want the next thing to grab our attention and hold our affection. We want something exotic, we want something exciting and yet the Christian life is like the life of Abraham.
It's a pilgrimage here where we live in tents with very few dramatic moments. Oh, it's a life that's very ordinary, postuated at times by drama. And so we have to ask ourselves can we handle that? We understand that that's the Christian life that God has called us to.
Abraham and Jacob and his children lived as foreigners, as nomads, living in tents. And there was this sense of impermanence. You know, when you go tent camping, well, these modern tents are not like they used to be. We have a modern tent.
Once you get it out of the box, you just lift up the center of it and it pops pretty well almost wide open and ready to go. But you still have to stake it down because if a strong wind comes, it's going to blow it away. And you've got to have some kind of rain fly over the top of it because if the rain's in the night, you're going to get wet. We went tent camping this fall and the first two nights were just gorgeous.
And the last night it dropped below 30 and we were all freezing because our tent just had met open air and we hadn't thought to bring a fly and put one over it. We were sleeping on air mattresses, which of course, and then using blankets on the top of us, but of course an air mattress gets as cold as the air around it. So we were sleeping on 30-something degrees. And a few of the family that had left the night before were thankful that they did so.
And the rest of us, it was, you know, we survived that I think is what we sent around the fireplace the next morning. Well, that's over. We said, you know, Melinda and I really have our own preferred form of getaway camping. And for a lot of years it was a condo in Branson with a full kitchen and granite countertops and a pillow top mattress and a view of the lake.
And we could get it with points off a credit card and not have to pay any money for it. That was all the comforts of home, right? That was our kind of tent camping. But you know, when you've got kids, they like to get out in the woods and so that's what we did.
But Abram reminds us, right, that by the way he lived, that this world was not his home. I can't imagine living in tents the rest of my life. But Abram did and he did it knowing and believing that he was just passing through. And it's true, we don't belong here.
And so we should be careful about getting too settled down here. Must we live in tents? No. Must we be homeless?
No. Jesus, of course, had no place to lay his head. But he was often in the homes of his friends, Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. But it wasn't wrong for them to have a home.
That's not the walls of the roof. That's the problem. It's how attached we are to them. If we're going to be programs here, we have to ask how attached are we to what we have?
Mark Ashton, the pastor I was telling you about died on Easter Saturday. And as he died, he murmured two words. He said, Sue, home. Abraham, like that pastor, looked ahead.
I'm soon home so I don't need to fill my life with possessions here. I'm fine in a tent. Jeremiah Burrow says, a little in the world with contentment, pardon me, a little in the world will content a Christian for his passage. But all the world and 10,000 times more will not content a Christian for his portion.
And so we are invited to ask, is our heart too attached to this world or the stuff in it? Or do we see ourselves like Abraham, just passing through? By faith, he left. By faith, he lived.
And how did he live? He lived as a foreigner. And how did he do that? Verse 10, he was looking forward to the city that has foundations whose designer and builder is God.
Abraham longed for a different homeland. He had a hope, but his eyes were fastened upon a different city. It's the city that the apostle John saw in Revelation chapter 21 and 22. And let me just invite you to hear a portion of this city whose designer and builder is God.
As John had this vision, we learned in Revelation 21, it says he carried me away in the spirit to a great high mountain. This is in verse 10. And he showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. It's radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.
In verse 23, it says, and the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it. For the glory of God gives it light. And it's lamp is the land. And in Revelation 22, verse 2, it says through the middle of the street of the city, it says also on either side of the river, the tree of life with its 12 kinds of fruit yielding its fruit each month and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the lamb will be in it and his servants will worship him. They will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads and night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun for the Lord God will be their light and they will reign forever and ever. And in verse 14, it says blessed are those who wash their robes so that they might have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.
You wash your robes that you might enter the city. You wash your robes in the blood of the land. You wash away the filth of your sin through trust, through faith in our Savior. And Abraham lived in tents, but his vision was on that city as we just learned.
The land was never the land of Canaan. Dry dusty, partial of land in the Middle East, full of war and rumor of war was never the final or full realization of the promise. It was just an earthly picture of the full promise, which is the eternal city of God. He has prepared for his people.
And for the Christian, we are called as well to an unknown country, unknown yet to us, but with a well known inhabitant. Heaven is an unknown country. It's the world that's yet to come, the age that is yet to come. And what that age will really be like with a resurrected body that will suffer no pain, no decay, no disease and live forever with a soul made perfect in righteousness united to that body that is immortal and imperishable and full of glory and honor.
That world is what we can talk about it, but we can scarcely even imagine how gloriously good it will be. We haven't been there yet. We haven't laid eyes on it yet, but we do know one who lives there and we will live with him, even our Lord Jesus. And so think what an appropriate illustration, Abraham, is not only for ourselves that we might share in his hope, but for these early Jewish Christians.
They were in the ancient land of God's people. The Christians, having become Christians, they were a minority. Oftentimes their possessions were plundered. People mock them.
Family sometimes scorned to them. Some had been imprisoned. Their Jewish acquaintances kept telling them, give up into the faith of your father, Abraham. Come back.
You've believed them. Come back. And the author is saying, no, no, you are called to believe in Jesus in a hostile environment just like Abram was called to believe. He was a citizen of the heavenly realm and that made him a stranger here and he was looking forward to the eternal city.
And that's how you can endure here too. So may the Lord grant us to share the saving faith that Abraham had in the promised Messiah and in the world that he has come to bring. Let's pray. Father, strengthen our hope.
And may the glory which is to come pull us along. May the Spirit of Christ in us who is the hope of glory, carry us. A grant that we would have our clothes washed in the blood of the Lamb that we might enter that eternal city and grant that even here and now we would live like we belong not here but there in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Amen. Let's stand together and sing.