A few weeks ago I asked for prayer for a trip I was going to take with Luella, my wife, and the Sarkisians, Steve who assists me, to Dubai. The Friday night of the first series of meetings, the room kept filling and filling. They placed as many chairs as they could place; people stood along the wall; people sat on the floor, it was really incredible. I looked out on that sea of faces, and there were represented, I asked the pastor, about 60 nations. I couldn't help but comment that this is what heaven is going to be like.
Nations in a Handshake Line
As I shook hands at the end of the service, people would say, "I'm I'm from Belize; I'm from Liberia; I'm from Brazil; I'm from Australia; I'm from South Africa," and the list just went on and on and on. Pray for United Christian Church of Dubai, a very unique ministry there in that amazing city. And, thank you for your prayers for me. What is the greatest challenge to true spirituality? Is it the functional atheism, the street-level irreligion, the overwhelming materialism, of Western culture? It would be tempting to think that those were our greatest challenges, but perhaps the greatest challenge to true spirituality is subtle false spirituality, counterfeit spirituality, spirituality that presents itself as the real thing but is not the spirituality of the Word of God.
And so because that is true, it's very important for us again and again, to go back to the basics, to go back and look at it again and examine things that we think we know and think we understand. And so, because I'm going to be spending many Sundays with you on Sunday morning this summer, I want to walk with you through Hebrews 11, if you would turn there, and ask that question: what is this thing we call faith, so central to everything we say we stand for? This year, I've already looked at the first seven verses of this passage.
I want to look today with you at Hebrews 11:8 - 12. But I would ask you this morning, do you consider yourself a person of faith? And if you answer that question, 'Yes,' what evidence would you give of that life of faith? In this passage we're going to look at, we have a case study of Abraham and Sarah, people just like us. And what's interesting about Hebrews 11 is, although it is the New Testament's treatise on faith, it is not as intensely theological as you would think. Now, all of the Bible is theological.
It doesn't so much focus on the 'what' of people believe, but on the way that they live, because faith is not something you just do with your mind. Faith is literally a lifestyle; it's something you do with the way that you live. And so we have a window into the lives of these people. And in these few verses that we're going to look at this morning, you really see four character qualities of faith, of true faith laid out for us very clearly. I'm going to do something different with this passage. I'm going to walk you through it several times, looking at Abraham and Sarah and how their life of faith expounds to us what faith is about.
Listen as I read: 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. By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.
Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. (ESV) What is this thing called 'faith?' First character quality: faith is always Word-based. Faith is always Word-based. Faith stands on the foundation of the clear Word of God. Look at verse 8, "By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance." Abraham moved out, not because he had some inner feeling, or inner prompting, or emotional experience.
No, Abraham's faith was a direct response to the command of God. Faith is not just hoping that things will turn out. It's not a wish that things would be better. It's not the cultural, "You've got to believe in yourself." No, faith is rooted in the Word of God. Faith is rooted in the commands of God. Abraham did what he did because God commanded him to do it. God had spoken His Word to him. Now does that faith operate in your life? If you're a husband, God has commanded you to respond to your wife in particular ways.
If you're a wife, God has commanded you to respond to your husband in particular ways. If you're a child, God has called you to relate to your children in particular ways. If you're a worker, God has called you to work in particular ways. If you have possessions, God has told you to use those possessions in particular ways. If you're a university student, God has commanded you to live in that environment in particular ways. Is your life shaped and directed by the commands of God? Can you say today, I respond in all these different dimensions of my life, in all these different environments of my life, because I take seriously a heartfelt submission to the commands of God?
Who Is Writing the Functional Laws of Your Life?
Who's writing the functional laws of your life? Look what it says of Sarah there in verse 11: "By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised." Sarah did what she did because of the promise of God. Sarah embraced this promise, embraced this awesome promise that from her would come a son, and from that son would come this great nation as innumerable as the sands of the sea. Is your life moved, and motivated, and driven by the promises of God?
Do you preach the promises of the Word of God to yourself? When you're in that dark moment that you never expected to be in, do you preach the promise of the presence of God to yourself? Do you tell yourself, "I am not alone because my Lord has promised to be with me? I will never be in a situation; I will never be in a location; I will never be in a circumstance by myself because God has promised to ever be with me." When you're facing a circumstance that's bigger than your wisdom, bigger than your strength, do you say to yourself, "I have what I need in the sufficient grace of my Redeemer?
He has promised me I will have everything I need for life and godliness. I won't run away; I won't be afraid; I will step forward in faith because He has made this promise." How much is your life riddled by anxiety? Riddled by fear? Structured by timidity because you aren't motivated by the promises of your Lord? Faith stands on the Word of God. It stands on His commands and His promises. Now let's be honest that life of faith is hard. I love this example of Abraham and Sarah because we know from the Old Testament, they were real people like us.
They struggled with this call of faith. They were not always sturdy in faith. When Sarah, as an old lady, heard this promise of a son, she laughed and said, "I'm an old woman." Maybe a good modern translation of what Sarah said as she laughed was, "Yeah, like that's going to happen." Abraham and Sarah, in their struggle to wait for this promised son, conspired to do a terrible thing. It's shocking every time you read it. They would agree that Abraham would have sexual relationships with a servant girl; a servant who had no choice so that perhaps that son would come.
Oh, there are moments when we do the same, when we doubt the promises of God, and we take a life into our own hands. We wrench it out of the hand of God, and we grab it, and we say, "I'm going to make this thing happen." Maybe that's as a parent, in anger you try to produce heart change in your child that only the Redeemer can produce. You think by the volume of your voice and the force of your personality, you can do only what the Messiah can do. Maybe that's a neighbor whom you want to see come to Christ, and rather than incarnated the grace of Jesus Christ, you're unrelentingly evangelistic.
We all do it; we all struggle with this call to stand firmly on the commands and promises of the Word of God. That's what faith does. Is your life shaped by God's commands? Is it motivated by His promises? There's a second character quality revealed by these two dear lives. It's this: that faith is always heart-rooted. The battleground of faith is not behavior. The battleground of faith is the heart. There is, in all of us, a war of faith in our hearts, and it's captured, although subtly, very significantly in this passage.
Let me read these words again: 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. (Now listen carefully.) For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. (ESV) He was looking forward. Now, I'm sure there was some physical looking there, but those words 'looking forward' point us to something that's much more profound than a physical search.
The Most Important Vision System
When you say to another person, "I'm so looking forward to (blank)" that's not an expression of physical eyesight; that's an expression of desire. Hear this - the most important vision system of a human being is not the physical eyes. The most important vision system of a human being is the eyes of the heart. And the eyes of your heart are always looking for something. There is always some vision that your heart is running after. There's always some grand desire; there's always some golden dream; there is always some kind of 'if only' in your heart that you carry with you.
When you close your eyes at night, in those last few moments before you go to sleep and you scan your life, what fills the vision of your eyes of your heart? When you think about what's going on, what is it that you want? What an amazing thing that is said here of Abraham: "Abraham was looking for a city whose builder and designer was God." Abraham, pilgrim that he was, was longing in his heart to finally find that place of rest, the place he could call home, and not just a home, but a home designed and inhabited by God.
We would do well to have that wish. I would ask you this morning as your pastor, how much of the vision that fills the eyes of your heart has anything whatsoever to do with the Kingdom of God? If you would say, "This is the thing that I want; this is the thing I hunger for; this is the thing I crave to experience," would it be God, His grace, His love, His wisdom, His presence? Would it? Are you, in your exile here in this terribly broken world, crying out for a city? Look at verse 11 again; it was Sarah, "By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised."
During her time of waiting, what did Sarah give herself to? She gave herself to a consideration of the faithfulness of God. She gave her thoughts to God; she gave her meditation to God. What rules your thoughts? Fear of the 'what if's,' wonderment of how things will turn out? Or do your thoughts again and again turn to God, His grace, His love, His wisdom, His power, His many beautiful promises to you? Hear this truth: what rules your thoughts and what rules your desires will rule your life. The war of faith is a war of thought and a war of desire - that's the battleground.
I would ask you again; be humbly honest; what's captured your thoughts this morning, this week, this month? What set of thought sets the direction for how you respond to the things that God has placed in your life? The war of faith is a war of thought and a war of desire. May God's truth rule our thoughts, and may desire for Him be our deepest craving. But there's a third thing - faith is radically active. Go back to verse 8: "By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance."
Now notice these words, "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." Now in order to understand the radical nature of what is said here about Abraham, you have to know a little bit about this man's life. The Biblical account would tell us that this was a rich man of many possessions. This was not the kind of man who took many orders; this was a man who gave orders.
And God literally called him to take of his own, and his family, and his possessions, and his cattle, and to be willing to begin to travel out there as a nomad, not actually having a clue where he was going. God was calling Abraham to be willing to thoroughly uproot and trouble his own life. The disruption of this man's life is hard for me to capture in a few words. Now think with me, if you would, of how much you appreciate disruption. Some of us lose it at the disruption of a flat tire. Some of us think the world has ended because the box of cereal that we were planning to participate in is now empty.
Some of us question the goodness of life because a certain person hasn't recognized our existence as we think they should. I'm sure I've quoted this a thousand times. I called my brother, Tedd, in one of those moments of pastoral despondency, and he said to me, "Yes, I know Paul, once again the world has ended." This is what faith does - faith has such a rich trust in God it is willing to do what is radical by any other evaluation. Because faith finds its security, not in comfort, not in location, not in situation, but in one thing: God and God alone!
Your Redeemer Disrupts Your Existence
And I will tell you for sure, your Redeemer has come to disrupt your existence by His grace because He wants to take you beyond you to find your reliance in Him. Verse 11: "By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised." The radical call on Sarah was the call to wait. I know everyone in this room enjoys waiting. I think one of the hardest things for us sinners to do, self-centered and self-oriented as we are, is wait.
And this dear one is called to wait, and to wait, and to wait, and to wait way beyond anything that would be rational. Women of this age don't conceive children. You see, we cannot let the small rationality of our brains be the final arbitrator of what is true and reliable: God is! And I think these moments where we're finding the call of God difficult and when we want to run away from it, perhaps it could be because we're looking at ourselves rather than looking at the God who has made the call.
Hear this: You again and again, perhaps you do this every day, you measure your potential. You measure the potential you have to do what God has put on your plate. Faith says, "My potential is no longer just me; God is my potential." And the waiting of Sarah was rooted in her deep-felt belief that the God who made the promise was faithful, even though at this point, it seemed unreasonable and irrational to have actually embraced that something like this would happen. Faith will enable you to do what would otherwise be utterly foolish except for the existence of God Almighty.
And when God calls you to do that difficult thing, He calls you, not to look at yourself, not to look at your limited wisdom, and your limited strength, and your limited experience. He calls you to put your eyes on Him and to conclude, once again, that He is able - that's faith. Is there radical activity born of faith in your life? Parent, would you go to your child once again, have that conversation once again for the 10,000th time, because you believe God exists, and He's your Father? And you go again, and you go again, and you go again.
Would you stand in that university classroom, student, faithful to your identity as a Christian, not living in that moment based on your strength, and your wisdom, and your ability to debate that professor who would ravage your belief, but because you believe that God is, and He's your Father? As you face the hardships of life, are you looking inward, or are you looking upward? Faith is radically active because it lives based on the existence of the glory of Almighty God. There's a fourth thing; faith is always future-focused.
Faith grabs ahold of the future and won't let go, and you see that again and again in this passage. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance (future focus). And he went out not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise (future focus), as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise (future focus). For he was looking forward (future focus) to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.
By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was passed the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised (future focus). Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. (ESV) Faith doesn't just focus on here and now; faith responds to here and now in a radical new way because the eyes of faith are on the future. Faith is holding on to the promises of God and not letting go of those promises until everything God has promised is no longer a hope; it is a reality!
What Faith Does
That's what faith does. And dear Abraham and Sarah had no idea what was before them. Oh they had the words; they got the metaphor, but could they ever know that, because of this promise, we would be sitting here today? We're the sand; we're the stars, and all over this globe now, there are piles of sand and constellations of stars worshipping because God's will will be done. I don't know about you, but I'm a bit thankful for Abraham and Sarah because God accomplishes His eternal, redemptive purpose through the decisive faith of His people.
We sit here as the sons and daughters of Abraham. You see, the arms of faith connect you to something so big, and so grand, and so wonderful, you can only capture it with one word - glory! Faith is Word-based. Faith is heart-rooted. Faith is radically active. Faith is future focused. Faith reaches out to the future that God has promised and refuses to let go. You see, the people that do that are the most effective and fruitful of people. I love how CS Lewis captures this in Mere Christianity: "If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were those who thought the most of the next.
The apostles themselves who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English who abolished the slave trade, all left their mark on earth precisely because their minds were occupied with heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one. (hear this) Aim at heaven, and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither." I would ask you this morning, "Where is your aim?"
Where is your aim? What vision compels the eyes of your heart? What world view controls your thoughts? Who writes the law that is the morality of your life?" May we be people of this kind of faith. Maybe you're sitting here this morning and you're saying, "But, Paul, I'm not. I am like what you prayed; I am often so fickle in faith. Sometimes I lack courage; sometimes I fail to heed your command; sometimes I doubt your promise." Well, there's hope in this passage because the One who perfectly lived this life of faith is your hope.
Jesus fully and completely obeyed God's command. Jesus completely gave His heart to His Father's will. Jesus was willing to be obedient, yes, even to obedience on the cross so that in His death, we would find forgiveness and hope, the promise of new life and with it, faith. If your weakness of faith has been exposed this morning, don't run from God; run to Him. Faith is the gift of His grace. Oh, maybe you're here this morning and you would say, "I've never believed in this way; this is alien to me."
I would say, "Don't sit in guilt; don't sit in shame; Jesus has borne your guilt; He's born your shame." Come to Him and say, "I am faithless; won't you gift me with faith? I place my heart; I place my life in Your hands." He says when you do that, He will never turn you away. He will forgive, and He will empower, and He will receive you as His own, and He will bestow on you all of His good promises. Reach out in weakness and receive the grace that only He can give. Let's pray: Lord, what a beautiful, encouraging, challenging, convicting case study we have looked at.
Thank you for preserving the record of these lives so that we can look into these lives, see ourselves, and see You. Lord, I pray that we would stand firmly on the commands and promises of Your Word, that You would own our thoughts, and You would own our desires--That we would step out in radical activity, not because we think we're able, but because we believe in You. And may we reach out with our arms holding on to the future that You have promised, not letting go until Your will has been done.
And for all of this we need help; that's why we pray. Come near to us by Your Spirit; gift us with faith, we would pray. In Jesus's name, Amen.
