I bring you back again to the eleventh chapter of the letter to the Hebrews, to the two statements regarding Abraham and his faith.
First, in Hebrews 11:8:
By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance;
and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
Then, in Hebrews 11:17-19:
By faith Abraham, being tried, offered up Isaac:
yea, he that had gladly received the promises was offering up his only begotten son;
even he to whom it was said, In Isaac shall thy seed be called:
accounting that God is able to raise up, even from the dead;
from whence he did also in a figure receive him back.
I trust that what has already been said has been of real value and help. We have been speaking in a very general way about matters related to faith—what God is after in enlargement, establishment, and life.
We are now able to go further and see these things worked out in the experience of His people, individually and collectively, bringing them into practical application and relationship to life.
So we return to this very practical outworking in the life of Abraham.
Abraham’s life may be gathered up into four things:
We are not going to hurriedly examine or discuss all of that. It is a comprehensive statement covering the whole life and meaning of Abraham.
Without further comment or explanation, God’s purpose in calling Abraham is perfectly clear. In the book of Genesis, we have read how the Lord told him what He was going to do with him and through him: making of him a great nation, promising him a multitude of nations, and so on.
There was a great purpose: to have a seed according to God’s own heart. Into that purpose Abraham was called.
But the realization of the divine purpose and the calling—notice that word, Abraham being called of God—was along the line of many testings.
I want to come this evening particularly to the second of those four things: faith and God’s principle.
We all know, that is, all who know anything about Abraham, his life and history in both the Old and New Testaments, that at a certain point in his relationship with God and God’s dealings with him, a covenant sign was established in the form of a rite.
It was indelibly registered in his flesh and became the covenant sign upon all his seed. That covenant sign, or rite, was called circumcision.
Circumcision became central to the meaning of Abraham’s life—the very basis of all God’s thoughts where he was concerned. It is significant that, although it was a rite, Paul makes perfectly clear that this is not merely a rite; it is a principle.
The significance of that sign and rite gathered into itself everything of God’s meaning.
The principle had already been at work in the life of Abraham before it was formulated into a definite act, sign, or rite. It continued to be applied in principle right to the end of his life.
That is, from the introduction of Abram upon the platform of divine activity, right on through his life, through the whole history of Israel, and then taken up in its spiritual meaning in Christianity.
The significance, the spiritual meaning, of that rite and principle is always the basis upon which God works.
It is found here right at the beginning, with the introduction of Abraham into divine history. By faith Abraham, being called of God—
Stephen said, “The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Ur of the Chaldees.”
Do you remember? The God of glory said to him:
Get thee out of thy country,
and from thy kindred,
and from thy father’s house,
unto a land that I will show thee.
By faith, Abraham, being called, obeyed. He went out.
The principle of circumcision began to work right at that point. It was a basic renunciation, by which there began to be placed between an old life, relationship, and set of things, and an entirely new one.
It was a severance, a cutting right in, a separation. The principle began to work.
On the one side were the Chaldees and all that they represented—the ground of judgment. On the other side was the ground of righteousness.
Paul’s whole argument in Romans about Abraham is that he was brought from the ground of judgment to the ground of righteousness by this cutting and severance.
So far as God’s mind was concerned, it was intended to be there: “Get thee out from thy country”—separation and severance from his country.
The book of Joshua tells us that Abraham served other gods beyond the Euphrates.
Recent excavations in Ur have revealed a good deal about the times of Abraham. Among these discoveries, it has come to light that in Abraham’s time there were no fewer than five thousand names of gods—five thousand gods worshipped by the people.
They worshipped other gods beyond the river. “Get thee out of thy country.”
The significance, then, is to come right out from every other object and home of worship; right out from anything and everything that shares the ground with God; right out from all that disputes the rights of God.
That is the ground which lies under judgment.
Idolatry is a principle, not a form.
When we speak about idolatry, we usually conjure up in our minds idols before which people bow down—all the icons and images of apostate Christianity, paganism, and heathenism wherever it is found. We think of that as idolatry.
But no, no, no. Idolatry is a far, far bigger thing than that.
If there were thousands in Ur of the Chaldees which functioned in the world of Abraham’s day, they are here tonight. They are in your heart and in mine: that which challenges God’s ground, that which disputes the rights of God, that which divides between God and something else.
Idolatry, I say, is a principle, not merely a form. The principle is a much bigger thing than the form, just as the principle of circumcision is so much bigger than the rite.
That is what the New Testament seeks to make clear. This thing is something much more than a rite in the body. It ranges over the whole realm of the natural life.
“Get thee out of thy country.” How drastic, how tremendous!
“From thy kindred, and from thy father’s house.” Abraham started out from his country, but, as we know, instead of fulfilling the whole commandment, he took his kindred and his father’s house with him.
So the journey was arrested. They moved to Haran, which was still in Chaldea and still under the government of those gods. Even yet, Abraham was in that territory and on that ground of judgment.
He was still in the place where God’s rights were challenged and disputed. God could not go further while anything of that remained.
The move never came until his father died.
This may represent anything, but our purpose tonight is to indicate that we are not only called upon, in an objective way, to leave the world; the world has got to leave us.
You may take a certain position in an outward way in relation to Christianity, but you may carry it all with you in your heart.
That is what happened with Israel in the wilderness. They left Egypt, but Egypt had not left them. Egypt was still in their hearts, and they were constantly harking back to Egypt.
This must not become a mechanical profession, nor merely an outward attachment or association with the things of God. It has got to become a matter of the heart.
Father’s house, kindred—the sentimental associations, the affectional relationships, the deep human connections—these have got to be severed.
It has got to be a fundamental and drastic renunciation: out from thy country, thy kindred, and thy father’s house.
When his father was dead, he moved; but he still took something of his kindred with him. Until that was finally severed, it was a constant nuisance to him.
However, he did move into the land. But here he is, moving up and down in the land and not possessing one foot of it.
In the land, but no possession. Why?
I think for two reasons. Something still had to be done in Abraham, but on the other hand, the land itself was full of idolatry.
On the one side, Ur of the Chaldees; on the other side, idolatry in Canaan. In between, a week and a long wait before his seed could possess the land.
God is not realizing His full purpose while there is any idolatry at all—on the right hand or on the left, anywhere.
God is establishing and standing by His irrevocable position: “I am going to be all or nothing.”
Whether it be Ur of the Chaldees or the land of Canaan, “I am not going to share it with anybody.” So Abraham, “I have got to bring you to the place where I am your all, and you have nothing else, before we can realize Our purpose.”
That is the principle of circumcision. It is a deep cutting in, a very drastic work of God.
Paul puts the two together and says quite clearly that the circumcision of the Old Testament and Israel was only a type and symbol of the cross of the Lord Jesus.
The cross is this very separation between all the ground where God’s rights are challenged, disputed, or reserved, and the ground where God is all.
You learn that the process and progress of the application of this principle is from without to within, and ever more deeply within.
“Thy country” may be very much outward, and yet it is a very real thing.
Unfortunately, we still have to use a phrase which is a contradiction in terms—and a very terrible phrase it is when you think in the light of the cross of the Lord Jesus: worldly Christians.
From God’s standpoint there is no such thing, and yet there it is. In some form or another, the idolatry that is in the world is associated with Christians, and Christians are associated with it.
I dare not go into details, but it is there.
Perhaps the best way in which I can speak of it without going into details is this: you notice that when the Holy Spirit is allowed to work in a life on the principle of the cross of the Lord Jesus—our death and burial with Him, and our resurrection with Him in newness of life—you see all sorts of things happening in the lives concerned.
Spontaneously, they begin to change lots of things—lots of things.
Things which may shock those who long ago left that land. At the beginning, they may seem hardly conscious of them, but as time goes on and they seek to follow the Lord, things begin to trouble them. They change in appearance and in many other ways.
The ground which lies under judgment comes under Holy Spirit conviction, and these people say, “Well, Lord, show me. He is not pleased with that; He does not agree with that.”
I think you know something about that. It begins on the outside.
Do not think that you have got very far when you begin to do that sort of thing. That is only the beginning. That is only leaving your country.
There is a lot more to be done yet. Do not hold the Lord up on some little matter such as dress, habit, or association.
It is very sad how much this still clings to Christians. I have been shocked and saddened in these matters.
But this is not a very advanced point. We are not dealing with something advanced when we deal with things like that; it is quite elementary.
If you have not dealt with such things, you have not got very far. But I am not telling you that you have got to go and deal with them because I say so. That would be legalism.
You ask the Lord that the Holy Spirit may work in your heart on the principle of the cross of the Lord Jesus. You will find that the Holy Spirit will quietly begin to indicate things, and there will be changes.
That is only leaving your country. That is moving from the outward to the inward.
The progress of the process is from the outward to the inward: country, kindred, father’s house; the clinging of natural likes and dislikes, preferences, and sentimental attachments.
The Lord gets in more and more to the inner life, to the heart. He presses the thing right to the very heart and leaves nothing untouched.
“Thy country; thy kindred”—that is getting deeper. Those affectional relationships to which we cling.
Many a life has been held up, and many another life has found complete release by dealing with some affectional relationship.
Oh, the tragedy of unequal marriages—Christians joining themselves with those who are not on common ground in the Lord.
On the other hand, there is the suffering when the knife of circumcision is applied to something in that realm: some relationship which is not on the common ground of righteousness.
But what a release there can be when the knife has been taken to that. We are held up until it is done. Abraham was held up; the whole purpose of God was held up.
This is applying the principle in a practical way.
The Lord goes on, and the next phase is that Abraham is in the land, but with no realization. This represents a still more inward movement of the knife.
Was there some mixture in the heart of Abraham? It is not for me to judge him, but I wonder, from certain things that arise, whether there was some ambition in relation to the divine purpose.
“The land that I will show thee, and I will make of thee a great nation.” Might there have been the thought, “I should like to be a great nation. I should like to become something great”?
I am not charging Abraham with anything. But in the next step, you will see that there may be some justification for raising such a question.
There may still have been some personal interest associated with his act of obedience—seeing something for some realization, something for himself, in this way.
Now, dear friends, whether it was true in Abram’s case or not, we do not know our own hearts. But there does come into the whole matter of our relationship with the things of God this question of personal interest—this word, ambition.
Pathetic stories can be told of the tragedy of ambition in the realm of the things of God.
I have recently had very close and painful association with such a case. I cannot give anything that would indicate where or who.
One went into what is called the ministry. He had a wife who was tremendously ambitious for her husband—everything to get him on and get him up.
He became actuated by this idea of getting on. Yet that man started with a real sense of divine things.
He was closely associated with Oswald Chambers in the heyday of his ministry, and I knew him then. Together we had talked about things of the Lord.
But by this ambition—his wife’s and his own—he got on and on until he came to the very top in one of the biggest denominations, granted very high honour and a degree from a well-known university for his work.
Today that man has no assurance of anything. He is a complete wreck mentally, physically, and spiritually.
I have spent long and terrible hours trying to help him onto his feet to believe God.
Ambition in the very things of God! You may say that is an extreme case, but it started in a simple way—at a certain point, some opportunity of advantage in the realm of God’s things. That led to the next thing.
God is going to have none of that in relation to His full purpose. Let us be before God about ambition.
It is a terrible, terrible snare. In the end, it can mean the frustration of all that God ever intended in our lives.
“He made Himself of no reputation.”
Was this long waiting, so to speak, between the two worlds—the world of the past and the world of promise—this marching up and down, living in tents, God’s way of pressing circumcision more inwardly over this matter of divided interest?
Was He dealing with the last fragments of personal interest?
If that is true, it goes very inwardly, does it not? Take the matter of patience.
You know, dear friends, the thing that will slay anything of that kind—ambition—more thoroughly than anything else is being kept waiting.
There is nothing that disciplines the motives more than being kept in suspense, being made to know how impatient we are and how much patience we need.
So Abraham had to be brought into oneness with God’s patience. The sword was entering his soul and searching out all this personal interest.
In order that you may see that I am not altogether imputing something wrong to Abraham, we come to the next thing: Isaac.
Isaac became the point at which the point of the sword was pressed most deeply.
Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac.
Can anything ever be more inward than that? No. God has driven the knife right to the innermost point.
What is the explanation? Yes, I know that in principle and figure God was bringing this man into fellowship with Himself in His own passion—the offering of His own well-beloved and only Son.
Yes, but there is another factor. Do you remember what Abraham said when the Lord was speaking to him?
In effect he said, “Yes, but that is all very well. What wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless?”
What wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless?
What wilt Thou give me?
God had to root out that “for me.” Even this element—“give me”—had to be destroyed.
So Abraham was called upon to give back to God, that the last segment of self might be eliminated. Then he got Isaac back, and there was no self-interest at all.
How inward this work of the principle is!
We need not say much longer. We have got the thing. But it comes back to us, dear friends.
You see what God wants, what God is after. How are we?
It may be that there are some listening to this word who have not yet made the first response: to leave that which corresponds to the country.
You may still be on ground where God has not His place, where other laws have dominion, where the principle of idolatry is at work in some way in your life, keeping you from responding to the divine thought.
Let me say this to you: there is a great, vast purpose behind God’s call. You are not called merely to be Christians.
You are not called simply to say, “I accept Christ as my Saviour,” and to do the things that other people called Christians do.
You are called with an eternal calling, which is only commenced in time and which is to take over all the ages of the ages to come. That is the calling with which you are called. That is the call of Abraham.
He emerged at last into that of which I am speaking. His life here on earth is only a figure of that.
God said to Abraham that his seed would be as the stars of heaven and as the sand upon the seashore. It had its little fulfillment, but it was a figure and a type, after all, as the New Testament shows.
Its full realization is in Christ. So the apostle makes clear that we are called in Christ unto the realization of a great eternal thought.
Nothing is possible until you have made that first response to the call: “Get thee out of thy country.”
It may be that there are some here tonight who have made that response. They are no longer, in that sense, in the world. They have made a gesture and a movement, gone so far with the Lord, and stopped.
They have stopped because there is still something in them from which they are not prepared to separate.
We can take it stage by stage, right to the final application. My point is this, dear friends: taking it all together, have you really made this fundamental and complete renunciation?
There is something in this that is more than appearance. The Lord Jesus said this most drastic thing:
Whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that he hath,
he cannot be my disciple.
You see, if there is anything whatsoever of that kind, it is Satan’s foothold in our lives.
It is Satan’s foothold in our lives to divide things with God. It is, in fact, saying that the Lord is not all.
No one else, nothing else, nothing else. Until it is like that, it is a hazardous Christian life.
The Lord says, for your own safety—and for the future realization of My purpose—you must have no god beside Me. You must have nothing that divides the ground with Me at all.
See that man Paul:
As always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether by life, or by death.
For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
The principle of circumcision is just this: God having all the ground, and nothing else being there to dispute it with Him.
Faith takes that ground. By faith, Abraham—
Unto a land that I will show thee.
He went out, not knowing whither he went.
God had not given him a rosy picture. God had not defined and described everything. He simply said, “I will show thee. If you go on, I will show you.”
When you have taken the step, then comes further light. In the meantime: not knowing, not knowing, not knowing.
That is the principle of faith: believing that God, having called me, knows that it is worthwhile to call me to make such a renunciation.
God does not do this sort of thing to get us into a trap, to deceive us, to rob us of anything, to lessen our life, or to take anything away.
God does this because He is the God that He is—the God of purpose, whose name is fullness.
All I want to know is faith in God: faith that believes that whatever it means, God means more.
By faith Abraham obeyed, not knowing. Faith says, “God has called, and I believe that God never calls without some real, justified, and abiding purpose.”
If it costs, the compensation must be far greater. It must be, because God is what He is.
Have all your gods of the Chaldees really satisfied you? Have they really filled your life? Are you really content by holding on to that something?
Oh, no, you know you are not. You know you are not.
Let us hasten to the final issue. Let us say, “Lord, grant grace that it is going to be the Lord all the way—not just a move so far, not another move so far and then a stop, but by the grace of God all the way, right to God’s end, with no reserve.”
If God ever says a thing, you can believe there is a great deal more behind it than appears in what He says.
That is how I look at the Bible. I find something in the Bible—a statement, a requirement, a command, or an exhortation. On the face of it, it says that this is what is to be done.
That may be hard enough to do, but I never stop there. I say, “Why? Why so? What has God in His mind when He says that?”
God is not merely giving out little rules and regulations. God has the immensity of all His full knowledge behind everything He says.
There is an immense reason behind the least thing that God says. It is as big as God Himself.
So I want to know what is behind this. Why should I not? Why should I? There is an answer to that “why,” and it is as big as God Himself.
You may take it: if He has called, the reason is as big as Himself. And you will never get to the end.