Let’s begin with a word of prayer this morning.
Lord, we come to Thee. Here is that refrain, Lord, in that song: “The eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see.” Lord Jesus, in Your mercy and grace, You have shed Your blood on Calvary’s cross. Lord, You have made a way that we might behold Thy glory, that we might see the living God.
Not only that, but that we might actually have a living relationship with the God of glory. How we worship Thee this morning, Lord. My prayer is that, as we share Thy Word, we would see the Word; that as we share Thy Word and behold, we would behold the Lord of glory.
My prayer this morning, Lord, is that You would open my eyes, that You would open our eyes, to see Thyself, Lord, as You are. Lord, we worship Thee this morning. We thank You for this table we have shared together. Lord Jesus, it is a lifeline, and we are thankful that You call us to remembrance.
Lord Jesus, it is You alone who can touch these hearts. It is You alone who can provide eternal life. It is You alone, Lord, who can forgive a sinner. And we thank You in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, I wanted to sing “Holy, Holy, Holy” because this morning, as we continue to share on the life of Abraham, one of the theme verses is that the God of glory appeared to Abraham. Oh, what a transition that made in Abraham’s life.
This morning is a continuation of a long series that I have been on, just going through the Word of God that we might behold who our God is. God is a God who reveals Himself. He does not desire to be hidden.
There are times when He has to hold Himself back from us, as that refrain says: “The eye of sinful man His glory shall not see.” But He does make provision that we might see Him, that we might behold Him; and in His Word, we can see who He is. So that has been our quest.
We have begun on the life of Abraham. Last time, I gave a little preview to the life of Abraham: as we go through the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you will see that God is like a father. He is God the Father, in that He took Abraham from nothing and turned Abraham into a worshiper.
He brought him from a place where he was a sinner, where he had no hope, to the place of hope and rest in God Himself—a man who had no faith, but yet was finally brought to the point where he could exercise great faith, even the giving up of his own son back to the Lord.
So we see that God is like a father. He is the One who comes to us, who trains us, who brings us along, who picks us up when we fall, who sees to it that His purpose for our lives is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
We also see some of the ways of God. If you want to know who God is, you need to understand, as you read His Word, His ways. I mentioned some last week: He is the God of grace and mercy, the God of revelation, the God of the cross. These are some of God’s ways.
I mentioned the significance of Abraham’s life, and I made three points. There are others, but I did make three. It helps if I put my glasses on so I can see my notes.
First of all, God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That is one of God’s names. It is marvelous, wouldn’t it be, to have God’s name saying, “I am the God of Jerry Amon”? Well, as a matter of fact, He is. He gives His name to us.
You know, the Lord Jesus said, “I have given My name unto you, and whatsoever you ask in My name, the Father will do.” Having the name of God, having the name of Christ, being under that name, brothers and sisters, means that God has made a covenant with you.
An interesting thing about Abraham’s covenant: if you read Abraham’s covenant, he was before the law was given, and this covenant God made with Abraham is an unconditional covenant. In other words, the outcome of Abraham’s life was totally dependent on God Himself and not Abraham.
Isn’t that the way God works in our own lives, brothers and sisters? The God of the unconditional covenant has touched your life, most lives here, and we are under His name. Because we are under His name, we are under that unconditional covenant that He has with us—that He has committed to us fully, totally, and without any reserve. And He gave His life for that.
Secondly, I mentioned that Abraham was the father of all that believe. In Romans 4:11, it says that he is the father of all that believe.
You know, in Matthew, if you read the lineage of Christ, he goes back first to David, which establishes the Lord Jesus Christ’s lineage as being a kingly lineage. He goes back to King David, and then he goes back to Abraham. But he does not go back to Adam.
Now why? Brothers and sisters, Adam represents fallen mankind, and fallen mankind can have nothing to do with the kingdom of God. So he goes back to Abraham. What is the significance of Abraham? It says Abraham believed God, and God counted it for righteousness.
So it is this matter of coming into a living relationship with God through faith. He is the father of faith, you might say. In a sense, brothers and sisters, our lineage, once we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, goes back to believing Abraham.
He is a father not only of the Jews by natural lineage—he is their father—but by spiritual lineage, through faith, he is also the father of the spiritual lineage. The Lord took him out and said, “Your children will be as the sands of the sea,” and then He said, “They will be as the stars of the sky.”
The sands of the sea, of course, represent the natural lineage, and the stars of the sky, the spiritual lineage. So we see in Abraham the significance of what God began to do through his life.
Then I mentioned that there was a great transition. God, up until that point, had used individual people in order to carry the testimony of God on this earth: Enoch, Noah—not Adam, but Abel, thank you, the other A, Abel.
But now we come to Abraham. Abraham has his individual testimony, but through Abraham God raises up a family to carry His testimony. Then He raises up a people to carry His testimony, and a nation to carry His testimony.
In the New Testament, we see the spiritual reality of that as He raises up the church to carry His testimony. We see the final consummation of what He is doing in His church in the book of Revelation, when you see the New Jerusalem coming down as a bride adorned for her husband. We see the fullness of the testimony of God in this New Jerusalem.
So Abraham is the beginning of that great transition from an individual testimony to a corporate testimony.
So let us begin this morning and get Abraham on this path of faith that we see in the Bible. First, we are going to read some Scriptures. Go to Genesis 11.
And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.
And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.
Now the Lord said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto the land that I will show thee:
And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and be thou a blessing:
And I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will I curse: and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
And then I will just say, “So Abram departed.” That is verse 4.
These Scriptures are necessary for a little background.
And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt of old time beyond the River, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor: and they served other gods.
They served other gods.
And he said, Brethren and fathers, hearken. The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran,
And said unto him, Get thee out of thy land, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show thee.
Then came he out of the land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Haran: and from thence, when his father was dead, God removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell.
Now, the key there is: the God of glory appeared to Abraham.
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.
By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:
For he looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
By faith, he obeyed and went out, not knowing.
Seeing that His divine power hath granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that called us by His own glory and virtue.
Other versions, I think more correctly, say “by glory and virtue,” but it can be interpreted either way: by glory and virtue.
With that background, we begin to see the Lord our God and our quest to know Him.
First of all, it is interesting to me that God called Abraham at all. We need to see that God is a God of grace and mercy.
He lived in Ur of the Chaldees. Now, as they have made explorations and archaeological findings—y’all can correct that on the tape maybe, I do not know—these archaeologists have researched this area. They found it was a city with many, many idols.
There were many idols in Ur of the Chaldees, and that is where Terah and his sons lived. Actually, religious tradition indicates that Terah was probably a maker of idols. That is how he made his living. Abraham was his son, and most likely, with his father being a maker of idols, he participated in that activity and probably worshiped those idols and believed in those idols.
Yet God appeared to Abraham. I think that is interesting. Out of all the land, all those people worshiping idols, God appears to Abraham, an idol worshiper. There is no merit that we can find in the Bible that Abraham had any reason why God would particularly choose Abraham. Nothing about his character or his deeds would justify in any way that God should appear to him.
Yet God did appear to him. It says, “The God of glory appeared to Abraham our father.” Interestingly enough, in Ephesians 5:5 it says, “No idolater hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” That is the Word of God.
God hates idolatry. If you particularly read the Old Testament, you will see that that was the great sin of Israel: idolatry. That is the reason, finally, God had to turn from them and let them go their own way, because they turned back to idolatry from the living God.
God hates idolatry, and yet this God—our God, your God—chose to appear to Abraham. You know, one of the definitions of grace is unmerited favor.
For mercy, when I think of mercy, it is to grant favor to one under judgment. That is what mercy is. You know, when the judge pronounces his judgment—I was recently in a trial, not upon me, but another—and he pronounced his judgment, then he had mercy in the fact that he took quite a number of days off the sentence.
He gave mercy. We see that mercy is granting favor to one under judgment. Now, Abraham was under judgment because he was not a follower of God.
We know from previous messages that I have given that we are all guilty. You know, in Romans, where it says man is guilty, he should realize that God is God just by observing His creation. But man continues to follow after idols.
Well, brothers and sisters, I would say to us: were we any different? If you do not yet know the Lord Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you probably do not consider yourself an idolater. But you have to think about what idolatry is.
Idolatry is a substitute for God. It is putting something in the place that God rightfully has in your life. So idolatry really takes on a much broader application.
Our possessions can become our idols in our life. The things that we possess can really become our idols, and that becomes the great thing: to have great possessions.
Pleasure—the pleasure of life—can become your idol: just seeking after pleasure. We know that that is probably the thing most prevalent in the United States. We have the opportunity here to seek after pleasure, where most of us are well off enough to have enough money to seek after all these pleasurable things in this world. So pleasure can actually become your idol.
Money. We know some people who are driven just to have more and more money. Power. Some people love power. They like the place of power. They like position, and power can be our idol.
Our job can be our idol: living for our job. Now, I am not saying that we should not be diligent in our jobs. We should. That is part of our responsibility. But is it your life? Is it what you live for?
Other people can become your idol. You make a person your idol. Your family can become your idol. Now, we rightfully should take care of our family, but has our family come before God? That is the question we all have to ask.
Recognition—the desire for recognition—can become your idol. It is what drives your life. Self, frankly, just living for yourself makes you your own idol. It is me, myself, and I. That is what life is all about: me, myself, and I. I become the idol of my life.
Yet, brothers and sisters, if you know the Lord Jesus, in reality it means that the God of glory has appeared in your life at some point and touched your heart, just as He did Abraham’s. The idols, the draw, the attraction, the things that you were putting first in your life, began to fall away. The idols began to be taken away because the Lord Jesus appeared to you.
Now, I thought about this matter of the Lord of glory appearing. Most people, when I say, “Has the Lord of glory appeared to you?” think of some great dramatic happening in their life. Sometimes, for some, it is that way, like Paul on the Damascus road.
But for others, I know who grow up here in the fellowship, particularly the younger ones, you know the Lord. The Lord has met you, and yet it did not seem to be dramatic. It was just almost kind of natural to you. It was a God of grace moving in your life.
He is not interested, frankly, in the dramatic, but He is interested in that relationship with you. Somehow, the Lord of glory has appeared to you. The God of grace and mercy has come.
In other words, there is unmerited favor. Brothers and sisters, we need to be clear: there is nothing in our life that merits God’s grace coming to us, that merits God even touching our lives in any way, touching our hearts so that we respond to Him. There is no merit there. There is no reason why He should, because basically we are idolaters.
No idolater has any part in the kingdom of God. Yet I do not know if there is anybody here who could say, “No, I am not an idolater,” when you look at the list I just went through. There are things that we put in and substitute for God in our lives, and those things are our idols.
Yet God’s unmerited favor has come down. Secondly, we know that before we accepted the Lord Jesus Christ, we were under judgment. “For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.” That is Romans 3:23.
We are all under judgment. We are all spoiled goods, so to speak. Isaiah 64:6 says that our deeds, our righteousnesses, are as filthy rags before God.
You know, sometimes we think all of our good deeds God will recognize. But you know what? When you meet the Lord Jesus Christ, you begin to see that all your good deeds have many, many flaws in them. Most of our good deeds are selfish in nature.
It brings us pleasure, or it brings us some sense of satisfaction, and it takes the place of God being the satisfaction of your life. So all of these things—there is no righteousness in us. There is no reason. I can tell every one of you: there is no reason that God should appear to you. There is no reason that He should touch your life.
Except one: it is because He loves you. He loves you. That is why.
There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that has the right that God should appear to them. No, not one. But God does. He has met us. This, brothers and sisters, is the God that met Abraham: the God of grace and mercy.
Secondly, we need to see that God initiated the action. I have spoken on God being the initiator before, but God initiated this action, not Abraham. Abraham was not seeking anyone.
I imagine Abraham was probably fairly satisfied with his life, or seemingly satisfied with his life, and yet God took the action. Another way to say it is: God was the beginning of Abraham’s new life.
I want to say to all who may not be believers in the Lord Jesus Christ in our midst today that God wants to be the beginning of a new life.
When God touches your life, it is a new beginning. Old things have passed away. All things become new. It says that we are a new creation in Christ. Think of that. The old creation has passed away, and we become a new creation in Christ.
That is what happens when the God of glory appears to you, when He touches your heart deeply. He is the initiator of that action. Now, He does stir our hearts. It says He knows us when we were yet in our mother’s womb.
The only reason that you are a Christian today, for those who are Christians, is because Jesus initiated the action. God initiated the action.
You did accept Jesus Christ. You did have to receive Him. But in Ephesians 1:4, it says that you were chosen before the foundation of the world. Before God even created this universe, you were in God’s heart, and He had already chosen you.
Now, brothers and sisters, I cannot totally explain the grace of God, where it is necessary for us to accept God and the fact that you are already chosen by Him. But we need to accept the fact, brothers and sisters, because this is a precious, precious thing: God has chosen you.
God has chosen you. Out of all the peoples of the earth, many, brothers and sisters, many, many multitudes have never accepted Christ, and yet you have. It is because He chose you. You think of that. We love God because He first loved us.
Somebody shared this with me one time. He said, “Jerry, it is like this. There is a big archway that you have to go through before you become a Christian, and that archway says, ‘Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. Take My yoke upon you, and I will give rest unto your souls.’”
In other words, you have to accept God’s grace. You have to go through that portal, so to speak. But once you get through and look on the other side, there is a sign that says, “Chosen before the foundation of the world.”
It is a marvelous, marvelous thing to enter into the reality of the fact that you are one of God’s chosen ones. Brothers and sisters, you were chosen by God, and that means God has a plan for you, a purpose for you.
Why were you chosen? Simply, all I can tell you why He chose you, or why He chose me, is because He loves you. Why does He love you? There is no merit there. It is because God is love.
You know, brothers and sisters, we love those who love us. Our love depends on a response from those to whom we express our love. If we express love to someone and there is no response, eventually that love becomes cold and it goes away.
But that is not the way with God. God’s love is different. God loves because He loves. He is love. You may not respond, but He still loves you. But may we respond to His love. Then you will find out that you were actually chosen by Him from the foundation of the world.
Well, He initiates. The God of grace and glory, He initiates. He is the grace of God. He is your new beginning in life.
Thirdly, we see God as a God of glory. It says, “The God of glory appeared to Abraham.” That was Abraham’s beginning: when the God of glory appeared to him.
Now, glory is a bit difficult to describe. We see it a lot in the Word, but actually, glory is another synonym for God. Because where God is, there is glory. When you see God, you see glory. When He appears, there is glory.
In the Old Testament, when the glory of God appeared, sometimes it was fire—fire enveloping everything. At other times, there was a brilliant light, or He is described as brilliant gold. In another place, it is a dark cloud, but the brightness of His glory is inside that dark cloud.
So glory is a bit difficult to describe, but one thing we know about glory: whenever God is satisfied, there is glory. Whenever His purpose is met, there is glory. Whenever it is God, it is glory.
I think of Paul on the Damascus road. When the Lord appeared to him, it was a brilliant light. In fact, it blinded him for three days, and another brother in the Lord had to come and actually open his eyes again.
But that light, that appearing of the Lord of glory to Saul, who became Paul, was so bright, so dramatic, that it actually blinded him for three days.
Now remember on the Mount of Transfiguration, when the Lord was there and was talking with Elijah and Moses about His departure from this earth. As He began to talk, the brightness of His glory began to shine through.
That Shekinah glory—the Shekinah glory is the glory of God—is that brilliant light. Another way to look at it is that the Lord’s physical flesh was actually like a shade over this glory that was inside, like a lampshade, so to speak, over the light of His glory.
But on the Mount of Transfiguration, as He was conversing with these two Old Testament saints, it just shone through. It is interesting that at that time God broke through, because Peter was saying, “Hey, we need to build three tabernacles.”
God broke through that and said, “Wait a minute. There is only One you need to consider. That is My Lord Jesus Christ. It is Jesus Christ whom you should consider. This is My Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
Actually, three times God breaks through the heavens with a voice and says, “This is My Son, in whom I am well pleased.” The Lord of glory.
I think of Adam and Eve in this matter of glory. You know, when Adam and Eve fell and sinned, they fell short of the Lord’s glory.
Now, my thought on this—and it is not my original thought, but it is the way I see it—is that when God created Adam and Eve, they were perfect. They were sinless at that time, and God’s glory was upon them. They were clothed with the glory of God.
But when they sinned, they fell short of that glory, and that glory fell away. That luster kind of fell away. It is like tarnished silver. Silver is so bright and shiny, but it can become tarnished if you let it sit for a long time. It actually becomes black.
So I think it was this matter of glory: God’s glory had been affected by Adam and Eve’s fall.
In 2 Peter 1:3, it says that God calls you according to His glory and virtue. When the God of glory meets you, brothers and sisters, you may not realize it at the time, but there is a call upon your life. This calling is according to that glory and virtue of God.
So what does that mean? I think the simplest way I can say it is that glory in your life is God’s expectation. That is glory. What is God’s expectation for your life? When you come to God’s expectation in your life, then there is glory.
I wanted to say His highest expectation in your life. Well, if it is God’s expectation, it is the highest expectation for your life. I think that is glory. When He calls us by His glory, it means that He has a plan and a purpose for your life. When you come to that place in your life, then it is glory.
So He has called you to glory, brothers and sisters. Let me say it a different way. I mentioned that when God is satisfied, there is glory. So when your life comes into God’s satisfaction, there is glory. That is why it says He calls you according to His glory. It is what pleases Him, what satisfies Him.
In this matter of virtue, He calls you by His virtue. Well, that is His character. To me, what that means is that nothing outside of God’s character, nothing foreign to God’s character, is a part of this life that He is calling you to.
In other words, He is calling you to a life in Him, a life of Christ. Anything outside of the character of Christ has no place in your life, because He is calling you not only by His glory but by His virtue.
God’s heart, brothers and sisters, is to lead us all to glory. That is why the God of glory appeared to Abraham. He was going to lead Abraham to glory, and He did. He is going to lead us to glory. That is His calling upon our life.
Now, I hope this is not too difficult, but what is the substance of glory? Glory, we see, is more the outward manifestation of what glory is. We see the light, the brightness, and all of these things.
I thought about it and said, there cannot be but one substance of glory. What is the actual substance of glory? What makes up glory? There is only one thing: that is Jesus Christ. He is the glory of God, His Son Jesus Christ. That is what brings glory. That is what satisfies God totally. It is Jesus Christ.
So now, when you read Romans 8:29, it says, “For whom He foreknew”—in other words, God foreknew you—“He also predestinated” you. You have been predestined in God to be conformed to the image of His Son.
That is why He is calling you to glory. That glory is to be conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ, who is glory itself.
In Hebrews 2:10, it says that Christ is to lead many sons to glory. That is the purpose of Jesus Christ: to lead you to glory, to lead you to be conformed to the image of Christ Himself.
Now, this is an individual call in your life. Brothers and sisters, you have been called to glory. You have been called to be conformed to the image of Christ. I do not know how much you think about this in your personal, everyday living: that my purpose for living this day is that I might be conformed more into the image of Christ.
God will challenge us in all of these areas and bring about circumstances through which He can bring out the life of Christ in your life, through the work of the cross, I might say.
But you know what? To me, it is so comforting to know that I have been predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ. That is my destiny. That is your destiny as a son of God.
The call is to you as an individual. Yet, brothers and sisters, if you really consider this calling, you should see that no one person can ever fully, by themselves, come to the image of Jesus Christ.
The image, the fullness of Christ—He is the fullness of the Godhead. The fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ. How can any one person ever say, “I contain all the fullness of the Godhead”? Only Christ could do that.
What I am getting at here is that no one individual can completely, even if you are fully conformed to Christ in your life, really express all of the fullness. It takes that corporate expression to do that.
That is why Abraham was the beginning of this move from the individual testimony of Christ to a corporate testimony, because no one is able to really give the full revelation of the glory of Christ. It takes us all.
We need to realize, brothers and sisters, in our calling, it is individual, but it is also a corporate calling. We are called to something much bigger than just ourselves.
We are called to one life in Christ, joined one to another in that life of Christ, joined to Christ Himself. It is not that you are joined to the Head and I am joined to the Head—yes, we are—but we are joined to one another as His body.
That Head sits upon the body of Jesus Christ. In other words, this corporate expression, which will bring glory to God, is something that God has always been after. It is not something that man can organize.
You know, man has tried to organize the people of God for many, many years—organized churches and these kinds of things. Man cannot organize it. Do you know how the corporate body came about, how the corporate expression came about?
It did happen. It was not something organized by the early fathers of the church. It was something that was brought to birth, and it was brought to birth at Calvary’s cross. The church is a living, organic thing. It was brought to birth at Pentecost.
Our brother Kenny is going to be sharing a little on Pentecost later, so I will not go any more into that, other than to say that it is a living organism. This corporate expression is a living organism. It is not just an organization, even a well-tuned one.
Sometimes the analogy we use is a team: “We have got to be a team working together.” Well, it is far deeper than just being a team. We see many individual basketball players on a team, and they are really not even a team. It is more than that. It is deeper than that.
It is the spiritual connection that we have as the body of Jesus Christ. It is a living thing. We are to be transformed into the image of Christ, not only individually but corporately as His church. When we are transformed, we will become the bride of Christ. It is to be a glorious church without spot or wrinkle.
You know, what is on my heart is to see the magnificence of this calling that God has upon our lives. Tremendous is not a good word. Great is not a good word. I have not come up with a word that really describes the absolute greatness of what God has called us to—His glorious plan of what He has called us to.
It is beyond us, brothers and sisters. If you really sit down and think about God conforming me to the image of His Son, it should be overwhelming to us. It should seem to be impossible to us.
Yet 2 Timothy 1:9 says, “We are called not according to our works, but by His purpose and His grace.” So this calling to be conformed to the image of God is God’s purpose, but it is also by God’s grace.
In other words, in your own self you cannot be transformed. In fact, self has to get out of the way through the work of the cross. But we do need to believe, brothers and sisters, that it is possible in Christ.
It says in Romans 8:30, “Whom He did predestinate, He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified.”
Now, most of us realize that we have been called. Most of us realize that we have been justified in Christ—just as if we had never sinned, just as if we were never a sinner. That is how just God has made us.
But do we really realize that we have been glorified in Christ? What is interesting about this passage is that it is past tense. Because in Christ it is done.
Brothers and sisters, you are coming to glory. It has been done in Christ. It is a reality in God’s eyes, because the past, the present, and the future are all present with God. Whenever there is something in His heart, it is already done.
That is as far as I can explain it. But, brothers and sisters, you have been glorified. You are coming to glory, and it is because it has been done in Jesus Christ.
May God bring us into the good of what He has done in Christ, not only individually but corporately, that God’s heart may be satisfied, that there might be glory. You know, it says one day that the glory of God will fill this earth, and we are going to be a part of that. That is not something apart. We are going to be part of it.
Have you seen the God of glory? That is the question this morning. Have you seen the God of glory?
In Hebrews 11:8, it says that Abraham saw the God of glory; it says that by faith he obeyed and went out, not knowing where he was going. That is how it affected Abraham. He was willing to give up all and just go.
It says, “By faith, he obeyed,” not knowing. But, brothers and sisters, he did not know where he was going, but what did he know? He knew God. At that point, he knew God. He knew God was leading his life.
Another way to say it is: when the God of glory appeared to him, faith came into his life. Faith came into his heart, and he believed.
I want to say this and be very clear: there is a lot of talk about faith, and I think there is a lot of false stuff out there. You cannot have faith if you do not see God. If God has not met you, there is no faith there.
The only way that you can have faith—the faith of God—is when God appears to you, when God speaks to you, when you know that God has touched your life in some way. Then faith can come into your heart, because faith has to be based on reality. Until God touches you, there is no reality there.
Faith is not superstition. Superstition is believing in something that is not true, or superstition can also be like hoping it is true—hoping it is true.
I remember sharing the gospel with somebody a few years ago. After we shared the Scriptures and everything, I asked them about their salvation. They said, “Well, I hope I am saved.” I said, “Well, you know, that is not the right response,” because that is not faith.
Faith had not yet come into that person’s heart. But we kept on sharing, and then the light hit, and that person finally said, “I see.” Faith had come into his heart, and he was saved.
Faith is not something that can be manufactured. Some people think, “If I just keep saying I believe long enough, it is going to happen.” That is not faith either. That is trying to convince yourself of something.
Faith is not being mentally convinced. Many people are convinced that Jesus Christ is a person. But if you ask them, “Is He the personal Lord of your life? Do you know Him personally?” they cannot testify to that.
In other words, they are convinced that Christ is real, but they have not yet had faith—real faith, saving faith. So another way to say this is: to have faith, God has to appear to you. There has to be revelation.
We use this word a lot around here because revelation is significant. Revelation only comes from God.
When the Lord asked Peter and His disciples, “Who am I?” they said, “Well, a lot of people think You are the great prophet,” and so on and so forth. Finally, the Lord said, “But who do you say I am?”
Peter responded, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The Lord did not say, “That is the right answer.” He said, “Peter, blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father who is in heaven.”
Now that is revelation. When you get that heavenly revelation from God, yes, it is God. God has appeared. That is revelation. That is what Peter had that day.
Abraham went out not knowing, but he knew God. He was no longer depending upon his feelings, no longer depending on his reasoning of why he should or should not go. He now had spiritual eyes. He had the eyes of faith because his eyes had seen the Lord.
If he would keep his eyes on the Lord, even though he did not know where he was going, he knew he would be going to the right place. He met God. The idols in his life became nothing.
You know, brothers and sisters, when God really touches our lives, the idols in our life fade away. We talk about our young people being captured by the world. Brothers and sisters, are we not captured ourselves? Do we not have our own idols?
My heart this morning is—and I have to say it for myself—let’s get our eyes back on Jesus. Let’s get our eyes back on Him, the One, the Lord of glory, who appeared to us in the first place.
We still need to see the Lord of glory. When we do, all these things we hold so dear in our hearts will just fade away, and He becomes the precious thing in our heart. That is when we know we have seen the Lord of glory.
I think we need to ask God to reveal Himself to us afresh, that our eyes might really see Him. Have you seen the Lord of glory? Maybe that vision needs to be refreshed in the Lord this morning—getting our eyes back on the Lord, off all the things of the world we have been so occupied with for the last week or two.
Have you seen the glory of your calling in Christ? Do you see how glorious this calling is: to be conformed to the image of God?
Brothers and sisters, there is going to be a day not only when the Lord is coming back to reign and rule for a thousand years. Brothers and sisters, if there is no conforming to the Lord Jesus, how can we really reign and rule with Him during that time?
A brother once said this, and it stuck with me so much. He said, “When we meet the Lord, are we going to meet a stranger?” If we have been conformed to His image, He will not be a stranger.
We need to be transformed by keeping our eyes on Him. Have you seen that in this glorious calling that we have been called to, it is much bigger than just you? It includes the whole body of Jesus Christ.
You are uniquely joined, by birth at Pentecost, to your brothers and sisters. You just cannot say, “You live your life; I will live mine. We both love the Lord. That is okay.” It is not okay. We have not only got to be committed to the Lord but to one another.
If we have seen the Lord of glory, if we have seen this glorious church without spot or wrinkle, we will leave all and follow Him.
Lord, we just come unto Thee this morning. I just want to end this prayer by saying, Lord, refresh that vision. Lord, may the Lord of glory appear to us once again.
Lord Jesus, I remember Isaiah. He had been preaching that message of righteousness, and in Isaiah 6:1 he says, “I saw the Lord of glory, high and lifted up on the throne, and His train filled the temple.”
Lord, it changed his life. It changed his message. It changed him forever. Lord, we need to see the Lord of glory. Lord, have mercy. You are the God of mercy and grace. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.