Good morning.
What happened to your face? Oh, just don’t scratch it. It’s okay. That’s right.
Well, I’d like you to turn in the Scripture. There are a few Scriptures we will read this morning. Turn first to Romans 8:28. This is very familiar. I think all of you know this verse—or you should know this verse. You should commit it to memory and often think about it, because it tells of our great on-high calling.
Romans 8:28:
But we know that all things work together for good
to those who love God,
to those who are called according to purpose.Because whom He has foreknown, He is also predestinated
to be conformed to the image of His Son,
so that He should be the firstborn among many brethren.
Now turn back to Genesis. That is where we will spend the majority of our time: Genesis 12. We will read some things concerning Abraham.
Genesis 12:1-4:
And the Lord had said to Abram,
Go out of thy land, and from thy kindred,
and from thy father’s house,
to 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 thou shalt be 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.So Abram went, as the Lord had spoken unto him;
and Lot went with him:
and Abram was seventy and five years old
when he departed out of Haran.
Genesis 15:6 is another one of those verses that is of very great importance when we come to the New Testament:
And he believed the Lord;
and He reckoned it to him for righteousness.
And he believed the Lord, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.
Now turn to Genesis 22, the offering of Isaac. I think most of you are familiar with that story.
Genesis 22:1-2:
And it came to pass after these things,
that God did prove Abraham,
and said unto him, Abraham:
and he said, Here am I.And He said, Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac,
and get thee into the land of Moriah;
and offer him there for a burnt-offering
upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
Then, in Genesis 23, we come to the end of Sarah’s life.
Genesis 23:1-4:
And the life of Sarah was a hundred and seven and twenty years:
these were the years of the life of Sarah.And Sarah died in Kiriath-arba
(the same is Hebron) in the land of Canaan:
and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.And Abraham rose up from before his dead,
and spake unto the children of Heth, saying,
I am a stranger and a sojourner with you:
give me a possession of a burying-place with you,
that I may bury my dead out of my sight.
Just a few verses in the New Testament, I think, will round this out. Turn to Acts 7. Again, I think these verses are probably familiar.
Acts 7:2-4:
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,
He removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell.
Finally, the last verses are in Hebrews 11. I think these verses are also equally familiar: Hebrews 11:8-12.
By faith Abraham, being 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.
Now let us have a word of prayer.
Lord, we have read Your Word. Your Word is holy. Your Word is precious. And we look to You. We look to You in complete dependence that You will meet us this morning.
How we want You to open Your Word and make it alive to us. We do not want to just hear sounds and thoughts and ideas. We want the Holy Spirit to open to us something more of the Lord Jesus: to be able to behold Him this morning and, as a result of beholding Him, to follow Him all of our days.
We commit these words to You. We say, like Peter said, “Lord, You alone have the words of eternal life. To whom shall we go?” It is to You that we look. We look to You to quicken us and to help us to focus, to shed off any heaviness that would keep us from hearing Your Word this morning and entering into Your Word.
For we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, what we would like to share with you today is obviously from the life of Abraham. Actually, a couple of months ago, Jeffrey and I went to New Jersey, and there I shared on these thoughts about men whom God chooses and uses for His purpose. That was the whole burden: men whom God chooses and uses for His purpose.
And we already know—I think we are privileged to know, we are blessed to know, brothers and sisters—something of what is deep in the heart of God, because He has not hidden it from us. When we read the book of Ephesians, we read those blessed words, “having made known.”
The Lord, the God of glory, is—I’ll use my own word—thrilled to make known the mystery of His will, the hidden thing in His heart, to bring it to the attention of man, in hopes that that great thing in the heart of God may seize the heart of man. Those that hear that word can be those whom He chooses and uses for His purpose.
The whole purpose is summed up in Christ Jesus, as we read in Ephesians 1:10. It is God’s intention, for the purpose that He purposed in Himself, to head up—or sum up—all things in Christ. That is the end. It is to sum up, to conclude, to bring everything into focus in the end, in the Lord Jesus.
That is the great purpose hidden in His heart from the ages. Everything that He does is with that purpose in view. The Son is the promised One. The Son is the Heir. The Son is the future Bridegroom of the bride, that we are as the church of the living God.
He is waiting. He is waiting for His mate. He is waiting for His companion. He wants to present His companion to the Son of His love and say, “This is the one that I purchased for You.”
This is the great thing in the heart of God. Now, equally great—I think it is phenomenally great—is the fact that that great eternal purpose includes you, and it includes me as well. Isn’t that extraordinary?
It says in Romans 8 that we are called according to purpose, that very same purpose. The end of that purpose is that we would be conformed to the image of His Son. We would be summed up in Christ. Everything is to be summed up in Christ.
And so, that is the great thing that is in His heart. I believe the Lord is looking today among His own for people that know that great thing, that apprehend that great thing, and that enter into that great thing—people He can choose and use to fulfill that great purpose in His heart.
Now, that is the burden that arrested me some months ago before I went to New Jersey. I shared on four men because I think men are key.
We are about to have a conference in just three weeks. It seems incredible to me. It is only three weeks out. So much to do, so much planning, so much to get ready. And just think of the opportunity we have to hear what is in the Lord’s heart—those deep things.
As we go to the conference, I do not want to disassociate this burden that is in my heart today from that overall burden of the conference. The overall burden is that God would find a link.
That link, down through the Word of God, is always men and women: men and women that heard the call, men and women that responded to the call, men and women that followed. They became that link, that prepared people that prepared the way for the King of glory to come in and for that ultimate purpose to be completely fulfilled.
That is why I believe this conference is so important. He is looking for one that can hear that thing that is in His heart, respond to that thing that is in His heart, and follow Him until that thing that is in His heart is fulfilled.
So that is the essence of the burden that is in my heart. I shared in New Jersey about four men. I will not share about four men today; I will share just about Abraham today—hopefully, if we get through Abraham.
Abraham we will look at as the man of faith. God is looking for men and women of faith that will respond to Him. That is simply what Abraham did.
We will look at Moses, maybe next week: the man of God. That is quite a title when you think about it. Moses was called the man of God. I would like that to be said of me. I am sure you would like that to be said of you.
Then we will look at David, the man after God’s own heart. What a thing to say of a person. No wonder he was a person God chose. No wonder David was a person God could use—because he was a man after God’s own heart. That was the secret.
Would to God that He could say that of us as well: that we were men and women after God’s own heart.
Then we will share about Paul, Paul the apostle. Now, Paul the apostle—everyone knows that is the New Testament. You understand? I made the transition from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Paul the apostle, whom we will look at, is the man of vision.
We heard not that long ago the importance of vision, brothers and sisters. What is happening with many of us, the people of God, is that we lack vision. We do not see what the Lord wants. It does not translate into our heart as a burden, and therefore He cannot capture us as He hopes to, and He cannot, in the end, use us as He wants to.
So we will look at these four men. When I did a little research on these four men, I noticed something about the first three—Abraham, Moses, and David. They are the three Old Testament characters most often referenced in the New Testament.
Now, I think because of that, we ought to take real notice of these characters. What did they do? What happened with them that made them so useful? What were the traits that could translate into us as we are being conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus?
I believe if we apprehend some of these things, it will be helpful to us. Abraham has seventy-four references, if you care to look them up. Moses is the most referenced, with eighty references. David has fifty-nine references in the New Testament.
And Paul, of course—Paul, everyone knows about Paul. How many New Testament books are there? Okay, this is a quiz. You may win something if you get this right.
Twenty-seven. The San Francisco lady got it right. I will still think about your prize; I am not sure what that will be. But there are twenty-seven books, and Paul wrote thirteen of the books of the New Testament. Can you imagine his impact?
How God called this man, and how God used this man. You cannot go anywhere in the New Testament without reading the Apostle Paul: his understanding of the heart of God, his understanding of the vision, his understanding of the end, his understanding of how we would be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus.
The Apostle Paul, in one sense—it is not an exaggeration to say—is the New Testament. In one sense, so much of the work there is from him.
Now, there are a couple of impressions as we begin this morning. First of all, it is impossible to be comprehensive when you deal with these many characters. At best, what we will do is a quick study and not a full rendering.
But as I meditated on these lives and went through these lives, some points seemed to jump off the page of the Bible to me. They seemed to refresh me and speak to my heart: “This is what I am looking for. This is what I am looking for in you. This is what I am looking for in My people.”
So it will be a quick study, a quick sketch and not a full rendering. We will be looking for some key things, some secrets, some traits about why God chose these ones and how He used these ones.
Secondly—and I mean this in the way of encouragement, if not to you, at least to me—all four of these men were not perfect. That is absolutely clear when you read the record. They were not perfect.
You may be perfect, but these ones whom the Lord chose were not perfect, and yet God still chose them. God, in His mercy, still used them as a link to bring about His purpose.
I believe that ought to be a word of encouragement to us: even with all of our very apparent flaws—at least, that is what Linda tells me—all of our flaws, He can still use us. He is still willing to choose us, and in the end, He will accomplish His purpose through us.
These characters are flawed vessels. You remember Abraham: he was an idol maker, or at least he came from a family of idol makers. And you remember he did that little white lie twice with Sarah, just to protect his own hide. “Oh, she is just my sister.” Never mind.
Later, we see Abimelech crying out for mercy because he almost crossed the line. Oh, you can look at so many incidences with these ones.
Moses: how about when Moses killed the Egyptian? How about when Moses struck the rock when the Lord said, “Speak to it”? How much it cost.
Or I think of David. A few things come to mind—just a few—namely, pretty important things: murder and adultery. Good grief. Is this a man after God’s own heart, brothers and sisters?
The only thing I want you to remember is this: God, in His mercy, often chooses the most flawed vessels and uses them for His purpose.
Or Paul: Paul ravaged the church. Paul was on a mission. Paul had letters. Paul was attacking the saints, trying to destroy the church.
Paul even had to confess later in his life to the Philippian believers that he had not attained the prize, nor was he already perfect, but he pursued. That should be true of us.
Early in his life, he said, “I am the least of the apostles.” Later in his life, he said to dear Timothy, “I am the chief of sinners.”
Well, that encourages me. I do not know what it does for you, but at least it encourages me that the Lord can use you and the Lord can choose you for His purpose.
So let us begin with Abraham, back in Genesis. You cannot get anywhere with Abraham until you begin to understand the first principle. That first principle of Abraham is the calling of faith. You cannot go anywhere; you have to see it.
Abraham came with his family to Haran. From Haran, the God of glory—it says in Acts 7—appeared to him in Mesopotamia and called him to come out of his family, come out of his land, and go to the land that He would show him.
That is divine calling. That is the beginning of our walk with God. It always begins with calling.
Now, Abraham in particular is a man of faith. You cannot look at his life without coming to that ultimate conclusion. When you read the book of Romans, when faith begins to be unveiled—how we are redeemed and how we are justified—the example used is Abraham, because he believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.
Galatians is another letter of the Apostle Paul. You cannot go anywhere in that book without seeing the example: Abraham, justification by faith. Abraham was the one God chose and used.
I think he is first of all, and foremost, a man of faith. Think of the significance of Abraham. God refers to Himself as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Isn’t that extraordinary?
That is how He referred to Himself: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”
You look throughout the Word of God in the New Testament, and you begin to see how it refers to Abraham as our father. That is a strong word: Abraham, our father.
He is not our father in the sense that he is our natural father, of course. He is not our father in the sense that he is our spiritual father, but he is the father of faith.
This man of faith heard the call of God, responded to the call of God, left his family and his people, and went to that land into which he was called.
So the first thing you need to understand, if you are going to even begin to understand Abraham, is the calling of faith. This man’s prominent feature was that he was a man of faith throughout the New Testament.
The beginning of our journey as men and women of faith begins with calling. That is the beginning. God calls us. Over and over, He calls us to Himself. Over and over, He appears to us.
When you look at Abraham’s life, you begin to discover a little secret: he had numerous callings. He did not just have one.
In Genesis 15:1, the Word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision, saying:
Fear not, Abram:
I am thy shield,
and thy exceeding great reward.
Genesis 18:1 is another example: the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre. So God appeared to Abraham more than once. He appeared to him first, of course, in this divine, heavenly calling.
You cannot begin to understand the life of Abraham unless you understand that beginning. Before we can be used, we must be called. Calling is the beginning of the Christian walk.
Every one of us must hear, as one brother put it, the divine summons. Unless you hear the divine summons direct to your heart—and then respond to that divine summons—there is no beginning for you as a man of faith. There is no beginning of your journey.
Everything began when Abraham was in Mesopotamia, as it says in Genesis 12 and Acts 7, and the God of glory appeared to Abraham.
Now let me ask you this question: Has the God of glory appeared to you?
Has the God of glory come to you in a word, in a ministry, as you were waiting before Him and opened your heart to begin to see something? Has that happened to you? That is your beginning.
It begins with the divine calling, when the God of glory reaches down into the earth and says to the man whom He will choose and use, “Come, follow Me.” It is the beginning.
Otherwise, all we have is a record of Abraham’s birth. You know, it says of Terah, his father, that he had Abram, Nahor, and Haran in that land. That is all we would have: his birth. That would be the end of it.
But we have much more than just his birth. We see the heart of God calling these ones whom He chooses to Himself. That is the key point.
Andrew Murray said it is the key point. If you miss the fact of this divine calling, you will never understand anything about Abraham’s life. It all began there, and the glory of it is that he responded to that call.
So let us make a few points. Faith begins with calling. That is where we all begin. Otherwise, it is just natural birth. In other words, you are just born, and you live, and you die.
But God calls us initially to Himself, and He calls us to be born again. Those of us who are not even the Lord’s hear that divine calling, and if we respond to that divine calling, we are born anew, born from above, born of the Spirit, and brought into newness of life.
That is the beginning of our journey. It all begins there. It all starts there. Faith begins with calling.
I will put it stronger than that: everything begins with calling. If we do not see that, all we have is natural birth. But what God is after is for the one whom He chooses to be born anew by His Spirit.
That one who is born again by His Spirit can, in the end, be used by Him to accomplish the thing that is in His heart. Otherwise, it is just natural birth.
Acts 7:2-3 explains this calling, how the God of glory appeared to Abraham. I believe all of us should go home and go before the Lord and say, “Lord, would You reveal Yourself to me the way You did to Abraham again and again?”
“Would You begin to open to me as You began to open to Abraham—not just once, not just twice, but a number of times? You opened his heart, and You revealed Yourself to Abraham. Would You reveal Yourself to me in the same way?”
That is what turned this man and transformed this man into a man of faith. The question before us is: Has the God of glory appeared to us, to awaken our dead spirit, to put in us new life, and to begin that transforming process in which we are transformed and conformed to the very image of the Lord Jesus?
That is the beginning of our journey, and that is the beginning of the walk of Abraham.
There is another important point about calling. This calling, if you read Genesis 12, was a call with a promise.
Genesis 12:2-3:
And I will make of thee a great nation,
and I will bless thee, and make thy name great;
and thou shalt be 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.
Tremendous promise. Tremendous promise.
This, to me, is such a significant part of Abraham’s life, because calling begins with a promise. You have to see that when you look at Abraham’s life. He called him, and He made this great promise that he would be used and that he would be blessed. All the families of the earth would be blessed through that seed.
Now, brothers and sisters, God cannot lie. The One who promises cannot lie. God, who revealed Himself to Abraham our father, made this promise, and He never took it back. That is the glory.
We read in the New Testament, in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, how all the promises of God in Christ are yes and amen to the glory of God. We read in Peter’s letter how we have received the greatest and precious promises that we might become partakers of the divine nature.
That is the purpose of the promises. So this is calling with a promise: “I will make thee a great nation.”
Abraham, had he not had this promise, could never have been used of God. It was the promise that was the key.
That, brothers and sisters, ought to encourage us. The Bible is full of promises—divine promises.
I remember the one I have often shared on in Peter’s life, because I happen to like Peter. You may not think Peter is very likable, but I think Peter is more like us than most of us are willing to admit.
We are obstinate most of the time—at least, I hear that fairly often. We are difficult to get along with, often want the first place, often stick our foot in our mouth, and often say the wrong thing at the wrong time. But all the while, God is doing a work of transforming that man.
The verse that means everything to me is when Peter was called. This issue of calling is the divine beginning. When Peter was called in Matthew 4:19, the Lord said:
Come ye after Me,
and I will make you fishers of men.
To me, those words, “I will make you,” are the key. The God of glory, who appeared to Peter and who appeared to Abraham, made a promise. In that promise, He said, “I will do the work. You just follow Me.”
You begin on this journey as a man of faith. You begin to walk. I will engineer your circumstances. I will raise up the issues. I will begin to deal with you, and you will be conformed to My image.
The more I read Oswald Chambers, the more respect I have. I do not know if any of you read his daily devotion, My Utmost for His Highest, but he often spoke about engineered circumstances—perfectly engineered for us.
Those circumstances which the God of glory, who appears to us again and again, brings into our lives have a single intention: to make you into the image of the Lord Jesus. They are divine opportunities. They are not to go to waste. They are for a specific purpose.
There is another thing about Abraham: the obedience of faith. Now, I have learned this little secret. Some people do not like that word obedience. I do not know if you are one of those people; if you are, I apologize in advance.
Some people think the word obedience is a hard word. But I do not think the word obedience, when you look at Abraham’s life, is a hard word at all. It simply means that when he heard the divine call—that was his beginning—he responded to the divine call.
That is all it means. It is not any more complicated than that. He responded, and he went out.
There is a beautiful explanation of that in Hebrews 11:8:
By faith Abraham, being called, obeyed.
Those three words, to me, are beautiful: Abraham, being called, obeyed. That is all he did. God called him, and he obeyed.
Three critical words, often left out of the believer’s vocabulary: being called, obeyed. That is what we need in our walk of faith—to be called, to be chosen, to be used of God. That is what, in the end, we need.
Now turn to Romans. There are two places where I would like to talk about the obedience of faith. These are verses that occur at the beginning and the end of the book of Romans.
Years ago, when I began studying the Word, I went to Brother Stephen about a book. Many of us did in the early years. I selected the book of Romans, and I remember going through it. I was told by our brother that I should read it at least fifty times, and I did—and more since.
I remember finding some of my old Bibles, and I always keep the tick marks: one, two, three, four, five; one, two, three, four, five. I read it over and over, and two phrases stuck out to me in this book.
Romans 1:5:
Through whom we received grace and apostleship,
unto obedience of faith among all the nations,
for His name’s sake.
Now read on. “Among whom are ye also, called to be Jesus Christ’s.” Read that very carefully: among whom you are also the called of Jesus Christ. Not just Abraham—you are the called of Jesus Christ.
Romans 1:7 says:
To all that are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints.
We too are the called ones. We too are the chosen ones. We too are the ones He wants to use for His purpose. And the key is for the obedience of faith.
Now, when you look at the end of Romans, look at Romans 16. That same phrase occurs there. By the way, for those of you who have not discovered this phrase, it only occurs in the book of Romans, and only in these two places.
Romans 16:25-26:
Now to Him that is able to establish you
according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ,
according to the revelation of the mystery
which hath been kept in silence through times eternal,but now is manifested,
and by the scriptures of the prophets,
according to the commandment of the eternal God,
is made known unto all the nations
unto obedience of faith.
This is the second point about Abraham. If you miss it, you miss everything: being called, he obeyed. That is a very critical point. It sums up everything.
When he was called out of Mesopotamia, he did not dally. He did not wait. He did not question the divine calling. He did not wonder about this summons that came from on high. He simply obeyed the voice and followed the Lord where He was calling.
To me, that is the second key about this man. Everything does begin with calling, but everything matters in how you respond in the end. Often, it is our response to the call that is deficient. But in Abraham’s life, the response was clear: being called, he obeyed.
I have often wondered what the secret about obedience is, and I believe the secret is simply willingness. Now, brothers and sisters, if you are not willing, you are not going to obey. You will be stubborn as a donkey. You will not be persuaded to obey.
But just willingness—I believe for those whom He calls, those whom He chooses, and those whom He uses, He is looking for one thing that He found in Father Abraham: a willingness.
A willingness. That is all it takes, is a willingness. That is obedience: a willingness.
You remember the story of Rebekah, that beautiful story. When you come to the end of the patriarch’s life, his only concern, it says in Genesis 24, is to find a wife for his son. That is all he is after.
You remember everything was to be summed up in that Son. He was the promised Seed. Everything was to be concluded in that Son. He was the One that all was for.
Abraham, at the end of his life, focused on finding a wife for his son. He sent his servant to identify Rebekah.
Do you remember the servant’s question? When he said to Abraham, “What if the woman is not willing to go to this land? What if she is not willing to go?” It is a good question, by the way.
Then you know the story. He goes to the well, he sees Rebekah, and all the story unfolds. Finally, Rebekah’s family asks her this simple question: “Wilt thou go with this man?”
This servant is representative of the Holy Spirit, who goes and apprehends the ones God is after, whom He chooses and whom He will use for His great purpose.
Rebekah’s response is simply these beautiful three words: “I will go.” That is all she says. Beautiful.
That is obedience. That is response to the calling. First, we are called. Secondly, we are to obey. The only way we can obey is to be willing, and the only thing we have to do is say, “Lord, I will go.” That is the secret.
I do not know if it speaks to you the same way. I remember the Lord Jesus when He was in Gethsemane. What a story that is of the agony the Lord Jesus went through in Gethsemane.
Luke captures a fact that I think the others miss. When He prayed that third time, there were great drops of sweat like blood falling down upon the ground. How deep was His agony? How deep was the Lord’s agony when His hour had finally come?
Then the Lord said, “Father, not My will, but Thine, be done.” What beautiful words.
Brothers and sisters, if we had that spirit of willingness, God would find among us some whom He could use. He would find among us ones whom He would certainly choose, and ones in whom He could fulfill His purpose.
There is another thing about Abraham. You cannot leave this fact out; it is of tremendous importance. The next thing about Abraham was the testing of faith.
Read Genesis 22 and think for a moment. Put yourself into the story. That is how they say you are supposed to read, by the way: put yourself into the story.
Think of what Abraham must have gone through when it said, “Take now thy son, thine only son.” Actually, I think the wording is beautiful: “Take thy son, thine only.”
Remember, this is the heir of promise. This is the one upon whom everything was hinged. He was to take this one to Mount Moriah and offer him as a burnt offering to the Lord.
Now, I think you could at least excuse Abraham for hesitation, but he did not hesitate. He took that boy, he took that wood, and they went to the mount.
You see the most divinely beautiful picture of the love of a father for his only son, and the love of the son for his father. It is a beautiful story. I cannot get over it every time I read it.
Isaac says, “Father, see the fire. I see the wood, but where is the burnt offering?” Abraham says, “God shall provide for Himself the burnt offering.”
It says in the beginning of this story that God tested Abraham. This was the test of faith.
As we begin our journey to walk with the Lord, He chooses us, He calls us, and we respond to Him. He will perfectly engineer our circumstances with divine appointments so that He may use those circumstances to begin to mold us into the image of His beloved Son.
He will take every opportunity. He will begin to do the work in you, just like He began to do in Father Abraham.
Genesis 22:1 says:
And it came to pass after these things,
that God did prove Abraham.
The word means God tested Abraham. God tested Abraham. That is what He did.
Testing of faith is absolutely essential. If you are going to be a man of faith, if you are going to be one God chooses and uses, your faith must needs be tested. You will have to go through things, just like Abraham went through things.
Those things are not meant for your undoing, but for your doing. In other words, they are not meant to destroy you, but they are meant, just as with Peter, to make you into that vessel that you are to be.
At that moment, the Word of God says, God tested Abraham. What a test it was. How tremendous. Can you imagine? Just imagine. Please think about it, meditate on it, dwell on it.
How he must have gone through the deepest agony in those moments when he carried his son up and put him on that offering.
Now, I will tell you a story. This is beautiful to me. God spared Isaac the knife.
When that knife was raised and Abraham was determined to plunge the knife into the breast of his son, it says the angel of the Lord—and that is none other than the Lord Jesus—stopped him in the middle of his action as he was about to plunge the knife.
He said, “Abraham, Abraham, do no harm to this one.” Tremendous mercy.
Now, He did not do the same for His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus. That touches me so often.
When that knife was raised above the Lord Jesus, God Himself allowed that knife to be plunged into the heart of the Lord Jesus.
We sang a hymn the other day, a hymn by Ruth Caye Jones. I wish we would sing this more. There are some hymns I can do without—sorry, I should not have said that. Some choruses I can do without. But this is one of those hymns which I often read and think about.
Verse five says:
Jehovah bade His sword awake;
O Christ, it woke against Thee;
Thy blood the flaming blade must slake;
Thy heart its sheath must be;
All for my sake,
My peace to make,
Now sleeps that sword.
Isn’t that tremendous?
The sword of judgment will never be raised above your head because it was plunged into the heart of God’s only Son.
On Mount Moriah, the command came to Abraham not to plunge the knife. But on Mount Calvary, the knife was plunged. To me, that is just a beautiful picture of the love of God.
Well, brothers and sisters, Abraham was tested. Now, I am in the industry where testing is vital. If we do not test what we put in buildings, it is a problem.
We have what we call the American Society for Testing and Materials. I know it is a mouthful, so we call it ASTM.
In ASTM, every piece of concrete, every piece of steel, every bolt, every nut—everything that goes in, paint, carpet, it can be anything—if it goes into a building, it must be tested.
Now you, dear ones, if you are going to be used, must be tested.
That is what Peter meant when he was explaining to those dispersed and said that the proving of your faith is more precious than gold that perishes, and it will be to the glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
This testing is not meant to break us, but it is meant to make us.
Let me finish with just this one thought. There is a fourth thing about Abraham. I think you do harm to neglect it.
What was Abraham’s testimony throughout his journey of faith? Think about it. It is not a trick question. I am not up to trick questions.
What was Abraham’s testimony in his journey of faith? His testimony was simply, “I am a stranger and a pilgrim.”
When you come near the end of the story of Abraham, Sarah had died. Now, do not minimize this story. Sarah—her name means princess. She was his princess.
Sarai means doubtful, but Sarah means princess. This one was the love of his life.
We see a most human story when we get to the end of this portion concerning Abraham. We see how human the patriarch was. It says he wept, he mourned. He was widowed and bereaved. Come on, it makes sense. This is a most human story.
His beloved princess was gone. You can imagine the sorrow.
This was his pilgrim partner. This was not just some lady he took along for the ride. She was his pilgrim partner through every dealing, and she became a princess through the making hand of God.
When it came to the end, when he stood before the sons of Heth, he said essentially, “My princess is gone.” What a human moment—a very deeply moving human moment.
I took from that a little bit of a lesson. Even if we are to be these great men and women of faith, in the end, we are supposed to be human. He was very human.
You read the story that Jesus wept. You read the story that John the apostle, when no one was able to take the book, break the seals, open the book, or even regard the book, wept.
It says of those disciples at Ephesus, when they thought they would no longer see the face of the Apostle Paul again, they wept. This is a very real human event. Do not minimize it.
But look for the real story in the middle of it, because always buried in the story is the lesson for us believers.
The lesson is that he made a single demand to the sons of Heth. He said, “Give me a burying place for my dead.” That is all he did. “Give me a cave, Machpelah. Give me a place to bury my dead.”
Then he went on to explain it. Genesis 23 says:
And Abraham rose up from before his dead,
and spake unto the children of Heth, saying,
I am a stranger and a sojourner with you.
That was the testimony of faith.
In the end, the testimony of faith is that we are but pilgrims in this journey. This is not our home. We have no continuing city. We have no place.
Think of it: if the Lord Jesus had no place to lay His head, how do we have a place to lay our head? Think of it.
Then it says of Abraham in Hebrews that he was a stranger and a sojourner in the land of promise, but he was looking for a city that has foundations, whose builder and architect is God.
We do not wander aimlessly. We wander with something in view. We wander looking at God’s heart and knowing that what He has promised will come to pass.
We wander waiting for the revelation and appearing of the Lord Jesus. We wander knowing our days as a sojourner are limited, but our days when we are with Him are unlimited.
That is the story of Abraham. This is the testimony of faith.
So, do you remember any of the points? Is one lodged in your thoughts?
I think the first thing about Abraham is divine calling. If you miss it, you will not understand this life. You will not understand this man of faith whom He is looking for.
I think this calling demands a response, and that is the obedience of faith.
I think, just like Abraham, He lovingly tests us. Every one of us—if you are His, you will be tested. It is the proving of our faith.
Finally, I think He is looking for ones that have the same testimony Abraham had when he said to the sons of Heth, at the moment of his grieving, “I am a stranger and a sojourner among you.”
They would have given him everything. The sons of Heth would have given him everything. But he said, “No, just give me a burying place for my dead.”
Brothers and sisters, this is what I want to leave with you—just this thought: Are we strangers and sojourners?
The world seems to demand everything of us. We cannot give her everything, because we give to Him ourselves.
The challenge for you and the challenge for me is this: Will our testimony be what Abraham’s testimony was?
Will it, in the end, be clear—as it was clear about Abraham—that we too are strangers, pilgrims, not aimlessly wandering, but looking for that city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God?