Abraham-The Obedience of Faith
Xi. — 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.
9. 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:
10. For he looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
THERE is no child of Adam who is held in honour by such a large portion of the human race as Abraham. Jews, Christians, Mohammedans, look up to him as the father of the faithful. And God honours him as His friend! If anyone, this hero of the obedience of faith can tell us what the secret is of a life of faith. Our Epistle has called us to be imitators of them who through faith and longsuffering inherit the promises, with special mention of Abraham as one, who, having suffered long, obtained the promise (vi. 12-15). As Paul, too (Rom. iv. 12), speaks of those who walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham which he had. “Let all who have with purpose of heart determined, like Abraham, to be strong in faith, giving glory to God, listen to the lesson of his life. God expects from us, we do indeed need, and there is within our reach, the very same faith which he had.
By faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance, and he
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went out not knowing whither he went. What was the object of God’s thus dealing with Abraham? And what, in real truth, the worth and the blessing of his obedience? The call of God was no arbitrary one; as we see into its divine meaning we shall understand what God asks of us and what our faith must lay hold of. Man stands between the visible and the invisible. His sin and fall consisted in his having turned from God to the world. His redemption from the power of sin could only be found in his giving up the world and setting his whole heart upon God. It was to train him to this, to teach him to find his life and his happiness in God Himself, that the call came: Get thee out from thy country, and from thy kindred, unto the land that I will show thee. God wanted to have him alone with Himself, separated from all he could cling to or trust in, that He might teach him to find his all in Himself. And it was by faith, faith that not only saw the land, and the promise connected with it, afar off, but saw the living God near to fulfil the promise, that Abraham obeyed. The call of God is ever accompanied by the promise; true faith in the promise is ever joined to obedience to the call. Obedience is of the very essence of faith. Faith is always the power by which a man gives himself up to an unseen object, and receives it into his heart and being. It is in the very nature of things impossible, to receive God without receiving His will.
By faith Abraham obeyed. We have seen how it was by obedience, by the doing of God’s will, the Son Himself was perfected, and perfected us: becoming the author of salvation to them that obey Him. Let us learn that obedience is the very life of faith, and the only way into the Holiest. Let immediate, unreserved, joyful obedience be the one thing our heart is set upon. And let it specially manifest itself in this, one of the root
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principles of God’s will, His call to come out and be separate, and give ourselves to walk with Him whithersoever He leads.
He went out not knowing whither he went. Say not that you cannot understand what it is to come out and forsake all.
You do not need to know. You need to know something else
that you have a God, who is watching and guiding you, and working out in you a character fit for heaven and eternity. The one great mark of that character, of likeness to the Son and fitness for heaven, is very absolute surrender to God, to let Him be all. Of that surrender deep humility, that only wants to obey and to trust, is the first essential. Therefore say to God, that at every cost, and in any way — you are ready to obey. He will never disappoint the trust of a soul fully committed to Him and His will.
By faith he became a sojourn er in the land of promise. He not only went out from Haran, but into Canaan. And not even this alone, but he sojourned, he abode, he lived there. He not only began well, but in faith and longsuffering he inherited the promise. It is the great lesson of perseverance again. Every day, over again, it must just be obedience and faith, until God has brought us into closer communion with Himself, and can speak to men of us or through us as those who are His tested and trusted friends — men who live only to honour Him.
For he looked for the city, whose builder is God. By faith He saw the unseen; in hope he lived in the future. He had his heart as little in Canaan as in Haran; it was in heaven; it was with God. And we, who have been called to enter into the true tabernacle which God hath pitched — oh, shall we not obey, and go out, even though it be not knowing whither we go. Let us separate ourselves entirely from the world and its spirit; let us, like the Son, die to the creature, that we may live to God.
A worldly spirit in the Church or the Christian is a deadly disease: it makes the life of faith impossible. Let us count it our worst enemy, and live as foreigners, who seek the city which is to come. Let us hear the voice calling us out to Himself, to close fellowship, to obedience as of the angels in heaven, to be a testimony and a blessing for the world. And let it be said of us too: By faith he obeyed, and he went out, and he sojourned in the land of promise, for he looked for a city.
1. See in Abraham how the whole life of faith is supernatural. His call, the promise of a country, of a son, of a seed — all is distinctly divine, above all sense and reason. It Is only when the soul looks steadily at the really supernatural things Bod is to do for us and in us and through us, that its faith will rest entirely on the power of Qod, and obey at any cost.
2. God will hold as personal intercourse with thee as with Abraham. God will be all to thee as to him. Let thy life be supernatural; perfect impotence under the operation of diuine omnipotence — Qod by His Spirit working out in thee His own life.
3. Be a sojourner in the land of promise — in the life opened up to us by the promises of God — the life in the Holiest of All, through the Holy Spirit. Live in the promises.
4. He went out, not knowing whither he went. Christ Is not only Priest but Prophet, Teacher, and Leader. Trust Him to bring thee within the veil, and to guide thee all through life in the new and living way. It is a peace that passeth all understanding, a love that passeth know ledge, a power that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we can think, that marks the life of faith in the land of promise. Let us go out, not knowing whither we go. cm.
SARAH.. — FAITH IN THE FAITHFULNESS OF GOD.
XI. — 11. By faith, even Sarah herself received power to conceive seed when she was past age, since she counted him faithful who had promised:
12. Wherefore also there sprang of one, and him as good as dead, so many, as the stars of heaven in multitude, and as the sand, which is by the sea shore, innumerable.
BY faith Sarah received power to give birth to Isaac. To judge by nature and its possibilities, there was no hope of a son. But the birth of Isaac was to be a work of God’s power: He had promised and He would perform. Sarah believed the promise, because she believed God the promiser; by faith she received power to become Isaac’s mother; and of one who was as good as dead, there sprang up as many as the stars of heaven in multitude.
We are told wherein it was that, in sight of what was impossible with man, her faith found its strength: she counted Him faithful who had promised. She looked to the promise; she considered Him who had given it; she rested on His faithfulness. The faithfulness of God was the rest of her heart and her faith.
What is the lesson Sarah teaches us in regard to the life of faith, and the work that God would work in us through faith? From one who was as good as dead there sprang as the stars in multitude. God is the living God, who delights to give life in death. When Adam sinned, he and the whole race died; they lost the life of paradise and of God. God’s great work is to restore that life. In the Old Testament He showed this in a case like that of Isaac, by proving that the new race He was going to prepare must have a life from Himself, a life born of one as good as dead. Isaac’s life was to be in a special sense a God-given life. In the New Testament He showed it by the miraculous birth of Jesus Christ: God’s mighty power revealing the divine life in the babe of Bethlehem. What God would teach us is: the new life must come from God; His mighty power must alone and directly work it, or all is vain. It is for this our faith must trust Him.
Just as really as the life of Adam, the life of Isaac, the life of Christ, was the immediate work of God’s almighty power, is the divine life in our souls His work. And it is not only His work in its beginning, as if He bestowed upon us a life that we had to keep in safety, and to nourish and bring to perfection. No, as the tree grows every day on that root from which it sprang, so our spiritual life must every day stand and grow in God and Christ. One great cause of the weakness of the spiritual life of earnest Christians, notwithstanding their prayers and efforts, is that they seek to do the work that God alone can do. They know not that God, whose Spirit dwells in us, will maintain our life in a divine power, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight. If they knew this aright, they would see that their one duty was in utter helplessness, in deep humility and dependence, to wait upon God and to trust and count upon Him to do His blessed work.
It is this Sarah teaches us. She knew what God had promised. For twenty-five long years her heart yearned for the son of whom God had spoken. At times her faith was sorely tried, but she ever came back to this one thing: He is faithful
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that promised! And in due time God did His omnipotent quickening work, and Sarah received power to become the mother of Isaac and of JESUS. And down the ages her voice of witness is heard: Trust God; He is faithful; He is the living God; He gives life from the dead.
The teaching of the Epistle speaks to us of the living God and the city of the living God to which we are come; of a High Priest who liveth, and liveth for ever, and of a work that He does within us, the power of an endless life; of a new and living way, in which we are borne into God’s presence; of the law of life written in the heart, and of a life within the veil, in the Holiest of All. This new and wondrous life it has revealed is nothing less than the life and work of God in the soul. To the question which is so often asked, Why we do not experience that life more mightily, there can be but one answer: We do not allow God in Christ to work it in us; we do not believe in the continual indwelling and working of the Holy Spirit. Even as Sarah failed when she sought for the promised son by giving Hagar to Abraham, we fail because we seek by our effort to do what God will not allow any but Himself to do. Let us, like Sarah, come back from our self-devised ways, and enter by the new and living way; the way of death to nature and to self; the way of life through the Holy Spirit, into the life which God alone can maintain.
Faith is the power by which we take up into our being, and yield ourselves up to and become one with the object our heart clings to and reposes on. God hath spoken to us in His Son. His Son is the great promise to us, the token and the pledge of what God will make us. Let us look to the promise, let us look to the Son, let us look to the faithful One who has promised, and with whom it is impossible to lie, and we shall receive power
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to receive and bring forth the new life that is of God. Let us, above all, take the place before God that Sarah did as of one dead, hopelessly, helplessly dead, as far as the prospect of bringing forth a new life was concerned, and we may count upon it, God will do His work. Impotence is ever one of the conditions of true faith. Sink down before God in utter emptiness; bow before Him and wait upon Him, and walk with Him, in deep humility and meekness of soul, as having nothing and being nothing; fall down as dead at His feet, and He will say: Fear not, I am He that liveth, and maketh alive.
1. Now, bow down, say to God that you trust Him for the wonderful new life the Epistle has revealed in Christ. Trust Him to reveal Christ, in the power of an endless life, within you,
2. Let every doubt and fear be met by looking afresh to the promise, to God the promiser, and to the faithfulness of Him who by an oath has confirmed His promise of blessing and of the power of the eternal priesthood of Christ to thee.
3. In this trust take thy place of deep helplessness and dependence and humility. Be nothing that God may be all. Just yield thyself for the living God through His Son and Spirit to do His mighty work In thee.
4. The full blessing of Sarah’s faith was not only Isaac, but as many as the stars in multitude. So with thee. As thou giuest thyself wholly to be filled directly from God Himself with the divine life, it will break forth in blessing around. Blessing I will bless, and multiplying I will multiply.