Abraham: A Faith to Leave the Land (Hebrews 11:8-10)

Kootenai Church

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Let's pray together before we open God's Word. Our great

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Lord, we are so grateful that you have revealed yourself in the pages of Scripture in history to us by opening our eyes and making us to see

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Christ and by your grace in drawing us to him. We thank you for the mercy that you have shown us in our salvation and for the mercy that you have shown us in revealing to us in your

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Word what you want of us, what obedience means, what our faith is, and how we are to walk in it, and we pray that you would grant us grace and understanding this morning as we look at this passage of Scripture that we may see in Abraham those things which are parallel to ourselves and that we may learn the appropriate lessons from what is revealed here in Scripture.

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We ask your blessing upon this time for the glory of Christ our Lord, in his name we pray. Amen. Please turn if you will to Hebrews chapter 11.

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We are going to be back in Hebrews 11 this morning, particularly starting at verse 8. We laid the necessary foundation of going through the

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Abrahamic promises beginning in Genesis 12 and tracing those through the end of the book of Genesis, starting at the beginning and seeing the way that information is communicated and revelation was given as it unfolded in history helps us to understand how it is that those passages and those promises should be understood and how they are going to be fulfilled.

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Having laid that necessary foundation, we traced the promises from Abraham through Isaac and then

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Jacob and then to Joseph, and we stopped with Joseph at the end of the book of Genesis. And you can see just as you glance through the order of the next heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11 how that was necessary to go all the way through Joseph.

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You'll see Abraham is mentioned in verse 8, Abraham's faith. In verse 20, we're introduced to Isaac.

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In verse 21, he mentions Jacob. And in verse 22, Joseph. And those are the main characters that we looked at finishing up last week in Genesis.

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Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and then Joseph. And each one of those men are commended for their act of faith, for their faith here in Hebrews 11, and their evidence of faith always comes back to the promise of that land for each one of these men.

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It's not like Abraham got the promise of land and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph all had faith relating to something else.

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It was this land promise. It was this Abrahamic covenant, which is the theme all the way through Hebrews 11, beginning at verse 8.

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All four of these men, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, they were looking forward to something.

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They anticipated something. They were trusting in something, namely, the word of God regarding the promises that he gave to Abraham.

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Now, there are a number of Jewish traditions associated with Abraham that the rabbis have believed that are contained in some of the rabbinical writings and the commentaries on the

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Old Testament. There are a number of traditions that Jews today believe about Abraham. Jews love their traditions.

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You see that even in the first century, in the time of Jesus. He reproved the Pharisees for their traditions that they had.

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As the Jews read through the Old Testament, anytime there was a white space, they would fill that with tradition, something attached in a commentary, something that they believed, something that some rabbi said, and they would usually attach to those traditions the same type of reverence and authority that they would give to Scripture, which is why

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Jesus had to reprove the Pharisees and the Jews of his day, saying, you nullify the word of God by your traditions.

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Why? Because they would take their traditions and even elevate them above the clear teaching of the word of God. I'm a big fan of listening to Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager.

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I like both of those men, Orthodox Jewish men. When it comes to political things, I think that they're mirror images of me in many ways.

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But when it comes to spiritual things, it's just a face plant every single time. Why? Because it is their traditions that cloud their understanding of spiritual things.

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It was the same in Jesus's day. Here's some examples of traditions that the Jews had regarding Abraham.

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It was believed and is believed by many Jews today that Abraham started off as an idol worshiper. So far, so good.

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We get that in Joshua chapter 24. We're going to look at that in a little bit. He started off as an idol worshiper.

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But they believed that Abraham began to reason to himself that everything created around us could not be the product of multitudes of gods, many gods, or a council of gods.

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He began to reason and logically come to the conclusion that everything had to be the product of one

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God, one sovereign God. So Abraham, by his own volition, left all of the polytheistic religions of his day and the idol worship behind him, and he became a monotheist.

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In fact, Abraham invented kind of monotheism. There were no monotheists before Abraham. Abraham was a good monotheist, and he began to evangelize others in this monotheistic religion.

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And Abraham was such a righteous and pious and good and godly man that God looked down upon Abraham and saw in him this commendable faith, this virtue, this piety, this

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God -seeking monotheist named Abraham who lived in Ur of the Chaldees. And God thought to himself, now there is a man

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I can work with. So God appeared to Abraham and said, let's make a deal. Monty, whoever that guy was back in the 1950s, let's make a deal.

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What was it? Monty Hall, yep. I was going to say Monty Python, but I knew that was not right. Monty Hall.

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Let's make a deal, Abraham. So he suggested to Abraham that he would give Abraham certain things if Abraham gave to him certain things, and so they worked out this deal.

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This is basically the Arminian view of salvation. That God looks down through history, sees which one of us are virtuous, righteous, smart, and spiritual enough to embrace the gospel if offered to it, and God says,

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I can work with that person. I'll choose that person and bring that person to the gospel. It's the Arminian perspective of salvation.

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You can see how this would work out very good in a Jewish system of religion, because the Jews believed in their own works righteousness, their own deeds, their own piety, their own faith, their own abilities to please

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God, and so here is Abraham, which is the prototypical example of somebody who, on his own effort and his own merit, can please

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God to such an extent that God would work with Abraham. That is how the Jews would view Abraham as being a virtuous person that is worthy of our following after his example.

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Now, Paul corrected that in Romans and in Galatians, right? I mean, Paul made the case in Romans that Abraham was not chosen because he was a virtuous man.

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He was not chosen because he offered something to God. In fact, Paul makes the case in Romans and Galatians that Abraham was chosen by sovereign grace and that the faith that Abraham had is the same faith that you and I have.

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It is a faith unto salvation, a faith which is the gift of God, a faith that results in obedience.

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It is the faith that pleases God. Paul had to make the case that salvation was by faith and not works.

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The author of Hebrews makes the case that faith is not just for salvation, but that faith is for all of life.

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Faith is something that starts us off at the beginning of our salvation. At the moment that God redeems us as lost sinners, that faith is active and that faith is obedient and that faith is present and it grows all the way through of life.

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We begin in faith, we live in faith, and we die in faith. That is the story of every believer in Jesus Christ.

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We begin in faith, we live in faith, and we die in faith. Faith is for all of life. That's the lesson of Abraham.

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So in verse 8, we'll notice in verse 8, he picks up the story of Abraham and makes reference to the things that we noticed last week and the last two weeks, and that is the promise of the land, that Abraham went out to a place that he was to receive for an inheritance.

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That's verse 8. Verse 11 speaks of Sarah. By faith, even Sarah herself received an ability to conceive even beyond the proper time of life since she considered him faithful who had promised,

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Sarah being Abraham's wife. So there were promises made to Abraham regarding a land and regarding a descendants.

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God honored the promises for both of those to both of those men. Impartial, there are more fulfillments of those promises that are yet to come.

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But verses 8 through 10 deals with Abraham. Verse 11 deals with Sarah. So we're focusing on Abraham in verses 8 through 10.

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We're going to be looking specifically today at verse 8, and I want you to notice that there are three things about Abraham that manifested his faith.

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His faith is made evident in three things. First, in verse 8, he left his home for a promised land.

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In verse 9, he lived in the land as a pilgrim. And then verse 10, he looked for an eternal city.

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He left, he lived, and he looked. I didn't borrow that outline from anybody. I came up with that all by myself, as far as I know.

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If anybody else had that, I'm not litanizing that. Knowingly, I might be doing it unknowingly, but I'm certainly not doing it knowingly.

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It's a good outline. He left the home for a promised land. He lived in that promised land in tents.

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And then he was looking for an eternal city. Let's read the text, beginning of verse 8. By faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance.

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And he went out, not knowing where he was going. That is, he left. He left Ur of the Chaldees and went into the land that God was to show him.

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Verse 9, by faith, he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promises.

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For he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. He left, he lived, and he looked.

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You can see how Abraham is the perfect prototype for what it means to walk and to live in faith as a believer.

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Because this is the story of everybody who is in Jesus Christ. At some point in our salvation, in the past, we have left something.

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We have left family. We have left old religion. We have left our attempts at self -righteousness. We have left our sin. We have abandoned any and all of those things.

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And then, currently, we live in this land, in this world, which is not our home. We recognize that as Christians.

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We are to live as aliens and strangers in this world because our citizenship is not here.

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So, having left everything behind us that God calls us out of, darkness, into light, now we live as aliens and strangers, dwelling, as it were, living semi -permanently in a world which is really not our home.

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And how are we to do this? By looking forward to something that we are to receive in the future, right? Just like Abraham, we look forward to that city whose architect and builder is

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God, a city with foundations. We're looking forward to what we have in the future, the fulfillment of those promises.

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We have left, we are living, and we are looking forward. There's three tenses of your Christian life there.

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Today, we're looking at Abraham leaving. Verse 8, read it with me again. By faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance, and he went out, not knowing where he was going.

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I want you to notice the connection between Abraham being called and Abraham obeying. By faith, Abraham, when he was called, he obeyed.

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I want you to notice that God takes the initiative in salvation, and we see this in Abraham's life. Abraham was called, and Abraham immediately obeyed.

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His obedience was itself the evidence that he had faith in this God who had called him.

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But there is no record before this of Abraham seeking God in any way. There's no record before this of Abraham being a righteous or a pious man who warranted

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God's grace or God's favor to him. There's no record of that. There's no record of Abraham becoming a monotheistic

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Yahweh worshiper long before he was called. We just simply read of Abraham and Terah, his father, and dwelling in the land, and moving around, and Terah dying.

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And then suddenly, in Genesis 12, verse 1, Now the Lord said to Abraham, Go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land which

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I will show you. It is God who pursued Abraham. There's no record that Abraham was pursuing God. God pursued

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Abraham. And this is the way it is with every sinner who is saved. It is always God who is the one who initiates it.

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It is God who pursues sinners. Jesus said, you didn't choose me, I chose you. We love him because he first loved us.

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God is the one who initiates salvation. God is the one who plans salvation, who purposes salvation, who affects salvation.

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And when he called Abraham, that effectual call to Abraham came with it, the power to obey and the faith to believe and the willingness to obey.

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It is God who does this. God pursues sinners. Sinners do not pursue God. There's no such thing as a seeker church, a church full of seekers, because there's no such thing as a seeker.

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Romans 3, verse 9 and 10, As it is written, there is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands.

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There is none who seeks after God. I know you're tempted to think in your mind, well, there was a time when

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I was pursuing the truth. I was looking. I was investigating. I was being, you were being drawn is what you were.

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You weren't seeking. You were being drawn. Jesus said, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him.

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This is the drawing of God. God draws sinners. Sinners don't seek after a God that requires them to lay down their lives and to die to themselves.

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Sinners don't seek such a God. Sinners do not seek a God who promises wrath for their sin against sin.

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Sinners do not seek after a holy God. Sinners are drawn to God, but it is God who does the initiating.

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It is God who does the planning. It's God who by his power draws sinners in. He did this with Abraham. Abraham was an idol worshiper when

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God called him. Genesis, sorry, Joshua, chapter 24. Joshua said to all the people, thus says the

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Lord God of Israel, from ancient times your fathers lived beyond the river, namely Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods.

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Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the river and led him through all the land of Canaan and multiplied his descendants and gave him

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Isaac. He was an idol worshiper. Terah, Abraham, his relatives, they were idol worshipers.

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Isaiah 51, verse 1. Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, who seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the quarry from which you were dug.

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Look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave birth to you in pain. There, Isaiah the prophet reminds them of their humble beginnings.

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Look from the pit from which you were taken out of. You think Abraham was this noble person out of all of humanity who warranted

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God's grace? It is not so. Look to the pit from which you were dug. Look to that rock from which you were hewn.

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Abraham and Sarah, those are humble beginnings. God calls sinners to turn from their wicked ways and he grants with that call repentance and faith.

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Those are gifts of grace. He calls us to himself. He reveals himself to us.

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He opens our eyes. He changes our hearts. He gives us hearts to obey. This is the drawing of God.

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And every sinner who has ever come to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith for salvation and the forgiveness of sins has only come to Jesus Christ in that way because God was at work in the heart of that one bringing him to faith in Christ.

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Because God is an initiating, converting, redeeming God. God seeks sinners.

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Sinners don't seek God. And Abraham's conversion is an example of this. Living in idolatry in a land surrounded by pagans,

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God said to Abraham, go, leave this and go there. And Abraham, this is Abraham's regeneration.

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This is Abraham's conversion story. He turned from his idols to serve the living and true God. That's what salvation is.

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1 Thessalonians 1, 9 and 10. Paul said to the Thessalonians, they themselves report what kind of a reception we had with you, how you turned from idols to serve the living and true

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God. You turned to God from idols. This is repentance. It is a turning around. And it is

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God who is said in the book of Acts that turns us from our wicked ways. This is the gracious God who pursues sinners.

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He finds sinners who hate him, who are at war with him, who want nothing to do with him. And God opens their eyes and works on their hearts and turns them from their sin, makes their sin look exceedingly sinful and makes the

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Savior look exceedingly glorious so that he turns them from their sin and opens their eyes and redeems them, gives them eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to obey.

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This is all the gift of faith. It is all part of that sovereign grace of God that comes in the effectual call.

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God called Abraham and Abraham turned. Why? Because the gift of that calling, that effectual calling comes with the willingness and the ability to obey it.

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All men are idol worshipers, every last one of us. Every last sinner before they come to faith in Christ is an idol worshiper.

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We have idols of ourself, idols of our reputation, we make idols out of our comforts, our conveniences, the ease of our life.

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We make idols out of our nation, idols out of our leaders, idols out of church leaders, idols out of everything in our home, idols out of our possessions, our retirement.

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We have no problem coming up with idols. And real conversion is God calling to the sinner and the sinner recognizing those idols, the hideousness of that idolatry, and turning from that sin to salvation in Jesus Christ.

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2 Corinthians 5 .17 says, if we are in Christ, we are new creations. We have left something. And Abraham is the perfect example of what it means to leave something.

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And he walked away in obedience. And this is actually, it's in Abraham's obedience that we see what, that his faith was real.

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We can't see that somebody's faith is genuine unless we see how their faith works itself out when they obey.

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This is what James meant when he said that men are justified or made to appear righteous in the eyes of other people by their act of obedience.

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Show me your faith without your works, I'll show you my faith by my works. Because my works or my act of obedience is in fact the evidence of my faith.

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And where there is no obedience, we have no reason to think that there is any such thing as genuine faith.

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Let me say that again. Where there is no obedience to the word of God, we have no reason to believe that genuine faith exists.

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Abraham was obedient. Luke 6 .46, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and you do not do the things that I say?

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That's what Jesus said, you call me Lord, but you don't obey me. You know how incongruous this is that these things just don't match up.

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We affirm his lordship, then those who affirm his lordship, those who are owned by him, those who belong to him, we will in fact obey him.

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And obedience is the theme of Hebrews 11. One of them, Abel obeyed God and he offered the sacrifice that was commanded.

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Enoch obeyed God and he walked with God. Noah obeyed God and he built the ark for the salvation of his family. And Noah's obedience was a reverent obedience.

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Remember, it was a cautious, meticulous, pious, diligent obedience that was careful to observe all that the

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Lord had given him to observe. And so when Abraham obeyed, his obedience was immediate. There is no record of an argument between Abraham and the

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Lord. Verse 8 says, by faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed. It doesn't say by faith

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Abraham, when he was called, negotiated with God, finally lost the argument and said, all right, I'll go. That's not how that cashed out.

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Abraham could have said, you know, I've never been to that land. I might hear that it's a really good land.

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The Lord says it's a good land. I've never seen it with my own eyes. I know the land in which I live is a really good land right along the

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Euphrates River. Not liver, river, Euphrates River. It's lush. That's where the

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L was going to come from. It's lush. It's green. It's prosperous. It's productive. It's fertile.

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This is a beautiful land. And the Lord said, leave this and go there. And Abraham could have said, Lord, if you're just going to give this land to my spiritual descendants in a spiritual way,

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I could stay here and not actually have to go to the physical land to inhabit it. But that's not what the

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Lord promised or commanded him. The Lord commanded him to leave. Abraham could have said, Lord, how about instead of leaving, that's 700 miles.

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It's a long trek. How about instead of that, how's about I give you some sacrifices? I have animals.

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I can offer up one, two. How many of those do you want? I can increase my tithe. I'm a wealthy man. I could do more for the widows and the orphans.

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Abraham didn't negotiate with God at all. God called him to leave, and he immediately left. He was obedient.

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Spurgeon said this, and I thought this was clever. How very curiously people try to give

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God something else instead of what he asked for. The Lord says, my son, give me thine heart, and they give him ceremonies.

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He asks them for obedience, and they give him will worship. He asks for faith and love and justice, and they offer 10 ,000 rivers of oil and the fat of fed beasts.

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They will give all except the one thing which he is pleased with, and yet to obey is better than sacrifice and to hearken better than the fat of rams.

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See, that is the kind of obedience that pleases the Lord, an obedience that comes out of my faith, that is the evidence of my faith.

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But it is not an obedience that obeys late. It's not an obedience that negotiates with God for some common ground.

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It's an obedience that says, if this is what the Lord has called me to, if this is what the Lord demands of me, then I will obey this.

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That is biblical obedience. Abraham's obedience was also remarkable, particularly when you consider what it is that he left, what it is that he was going to, and what it is that would have cost him.

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Would you take for a moment, just to think for a couple moments about what it was that Abraham was leaving.

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Abraham was called out of Ur of the Chaldees. This was along what we call the Fertile Crescent in that Mediterranean area, up the

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Euphrates River to the headwaters of the Euphrates River, and then down the coast of Israel. This is the area that Abraham lived in, in Ur of the

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Chaldees. It is known as the birthplace or the cradle of civilization. Even pagans refer to it as the cradle of civilization.

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They don't understand that after the flood, that's where civilization began. They say, well, roughly 8 ,000 years ago, we have some writings from then.

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So that's where cavemen first crawled out of their holes and started scratching on rocks to communicate with one another.

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They don't recognize any of the truth of biblical history, but they do recognize this, that the earliest civilizations came from Ur of the

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Chaldees. This was an advanced civilization that Abraham would have left. It was in the

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Mesopotamian Valley. This is near where the Tower of Babel was at. This is where civilization started and cities were built initially after the flood.

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The Fertile Crescent was a beautiful area. This is the birthplace of the Sumerian civilization, Babylonian, Assyrian, Phoenician.

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These were complex and advanced societies, even in Abraham's day. These were cities that had foundations.

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These were cities that had buildings and houses. This was some of the most advanced civilization on the face of the planet at the time.

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Abraham was not leaving one cave off in the woods for another cave off in the woods somewhere else.

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Abraham was leaving civilization as he had always known it. The most advanced, the most glorious civilization on the planet at the time.

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That is what Abraham was turning his back on. It was a place... We can assume that Abraham would have had a home or a house in Ur of the

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Chaldees, because there were buildings at the time. He would have had to have sold everything, left all of the comforts and the conveniences, all of the luxuries, all of the security, all of the people that he knew, his family, his acquaintances, his business partners or associates that he would have had, everybody that he knew that he was familiar with, the culture, the language.

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He would have been leaving all of those things behind when he left. Abraham was not called to just move his tent from one cave to another.

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Abraham was called to leave everything that he was familiar with and had known behind and to turn out and to go to a place that the

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Lord was sending him, a place that he had never seen and never been to before. That is faith.

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That helps you appreciate what Abraham was doing, right? Because the Lord didn't give him any of the details about what the land was.

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In fact, the Lord in Genesis chapter 12 didn't even tell Abraham specifically exactly where he was going.

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He said, go out to the land, which I'll show you. And Abraham was just supposed to go out and start walking. Abraham would have left behind Teran and the gravesite of his father, the city of Haran.

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He was 75 years old when he left. He would have been leaving his religion, his idol -worshiping community, all of his friends, all the people that he had worshiped with, everything behind, and Lot went with him.

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And where was he going? Abraham didn't even know where he was going. He went to a land he did not know, to a land that he had never seen, and he had no way of knowing by his own eyes of sight whether the land to which he was going was better or worse than the land from which he had come.

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He had no way of knowing that. He'd never been there. I find it interesting in Genesis chapter 12, I think it's verse 7, when it says that Abraham left in verse 4, he went into, got into the land of Canaan, and then

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Moses makes the note, and the Canaanites lived in the land at that time. I wonder if that took

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Abraham by surprise. The Lord said, go out to the land that I'm going to give you, and Abraham thinks, okay, good. I'm going to end up settling down in a place where there is nobody.

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And he gets into the land of Canaan, and guess what he finds there? There are cities there. There are houses there. There are

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Canaanites in the land. In fact, Abraham could have looked around at the people in the land at that time, and he would have seen that they were warring tribes and warring factions, because when he got into the land of Israel in Genesis chapter 14, when he got into the promised land in Genesis chapter 14, there was a war between the five kings and the four kings.

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You remember, and the king of Sodom was one of those. That's, it is in the spoil of that, and the aftermath of that, that's when

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Abraham met Melchizedek. Do you remember that, Genesis 14? So you had warring factions, then you have a lot going and settling near Sodom.

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So you had idol -worshiping cities. You had rank paganism. You had violent warring factions with all of these many kings that were all seeking to rape and pillage and plunder one another, each other's cities all over the place.

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And then these cities were filled with pagan -worshiping idolaters that were involved in all forms of sexual immorality.

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I wonder, did Abraham show up and think, so this is the promised land? I mean,

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I left one idolatrous culture for another idolatrous culture?

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I sold my house, I left that city and that civilization, and then

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I show up here, and this land is anything but empty. Still to this day in Israel, up in Dan, the city of Dan, there is a monument called

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Abraham's Gate. And it is the rock gate through which Abraham would have went in Genesis chapter 14.

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He went up as far as the city of Dan, went up into that region. It's called Abraham's Gate because that gate dates back to prior to Abraham's time.

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And the foundations are still there, and the rocks are still there. You can walk up and put your hands on stones that Abraham would have walked right next to.

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They are still there to this day. Abraham did not go into an empty land.

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He went into a land that was filled with people that were hostile to him, and to his God, and to his worldview. That's what

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God called him to. Do you know what that would have cost him, by the way? Can you imagine being

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Abraham and trying to explain that whole thing to all your business partners and your neighbors, right?

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To be Abraham and have somebody walk up and say, look, I was scrolling through Zillow. I noticed that you put your house up on the market.

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I'm just wondering, how come you didn't tell me? I mean, I would have given you an offer on the house. I think you've overpriced it. And then

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Abraham would have to explain that he was selling the house and gonna sell the land. Here's what it was going for. And where are you going?

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To another land. Well, where is this other land? North, south, east, west? At this point,

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I don't know. What does it look like? I don't know. Never been there? Never been there.

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Have you ever seen it? I've never seen it. Do you know which direction you're going? No, at this point,

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I don't. Why are you going there? Oh, there's the rub, right?

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God told me to go to the land. In fact, God promised me that if I leave everything here and I go to the land, he'll give that land to me and to my descendants.

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He will give me descendants that outnumber the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore. Abraham, you're 75 years old.

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Sarah, 65 years old. You're going to have descendants? She's been barren all of this time.

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You're going to have descendants. God told you to leave all of this and go there.

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Do you see why Abraham's faith is so commendable? At the bare word of God and his command,

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Abraham left everything and went towards something that he had not yet seen.

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Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, right? Noah was warned about things not yet seen, and he built an ark.

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Abraham was promised something he had not yet seen, and he left. That's faith. Faith takes

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God at his bare word and is willing to believe and to trust that the God who promises is the

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God who will bring to pass everything he has promised. Abraham went out in ignorance, having never seen the land, having not known where he was going, having never been there.

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He went out in ignorance, and there is an element of ignorance in all of our faith when we all first come to Christ, is there not?

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You remember back when you first trusted Christ for salvation? Did you know everything that the Lord had planned for you at that time?

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No, you sure did not, did you? You had no idea that you would be here today or that you would have experienced all the things that you've experienced since your salvation, and yet the walk of faith and the walk that God calls us to is a walk where if we knew ahead of time what it was going to cost us or what we were going to endure, we would never volunteer or sign up for that.

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But it is something that once we're on the other side of it, we look back on it and say, I really would not have it any other way.

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Isn't that an oddity? If we knew ahead of time, we would never volunteer for that, but looking back on it, we say that's exactly what was best.

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I would never have that any other way. For Abraham, that's what it was. He didn't know ahead of time all that God had planned for him.

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In fact, we saw as we went through Genesis 13, 14, 13, 15, and 17, those chapters that more and more detail was added every time

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God reconfirmed the covenant with him. God gave him a few more details. At the beginning, Abraham didn't know that.

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God called him and he obeyed, that was it. And all of the details he did not have at the time. But on the other side of it,

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I'm sure Abraham would have said, I wouldn't have had that any other way. And I know what you're tempted to think at this point.

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This is something that I've heard people say. You might be tempted to think to yourself, well, Abraham's obedience is easier because he heard a voice, right?

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And it might be that Abraham heard a voice or saw a vision or some sort of a manifestation. Abraham heard a voice.

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I mean, if God spoke to me and told me what he wanted me to do and I heard a voice or saw that manifestation,

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I would obey like Abraham obeyed as well. No, you wouldn't. You wouldn't.

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If you will not obey the written word of God, you will not obey a voice. In fact, what I typically find is the people who think they're hearing voices will jump after it no matter how nonsensical it is to avoid obeying the written word of God.

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Jesus said they had Moses and the prophets and if they will not hear Moses and the prophets, they will not hear even if somebody rises from the dead and goes and preaches to them.

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Peter, speaking of hearing a voice, the voice from heaven that said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

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That's in Matthew 17. Peter describes that experience in 2 Peter 1. And he says, I had this experience.

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I heard this voice, but we have the written word made more sure. Do you understand that in this revelation, you have more information than Abraham could have ever imagined having about God and his purposes.

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And if you will not obey this, you will not obey even a voice because the written word is more sure.

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Notice in verse eight, by faith Abraham went out, goat went to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance and he went out not knowing where he was going.

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The mention of the word inheritance there is something that reminds us of what we read up in verse seven by faith. Noah was warned about things not yet seen.

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Look at the end of verse seven and he became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. The reference to Abraham inheriting something or going out and receiving an inheritance is a hearkening back to the same thing that he talked about with Noah.

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There's something that all the righteous, whether it's Noah or Abraham, or you and I have in common, that that is that there is an inheritance that awaits the righteous.

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There's something that we are given after this life in the life that is to come in the world that is to come. That is the part and portion of all those who have faith in God and have been declared righteous on the basis of that faith.

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We have an inheritance that is to come. Abraham went out and his inheritance was that land, a land that he and his descendants have not received in full yet, but he will.

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And we also will receive the inheritance and everything that is promised to the righteous, not just righteousness, but also eternal glorification and a new heavens and a new earth and a dwelling in and a participation in that kingdom that was promised to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, and all the rest of the

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Old Testament righteous. We get to enjoy the very same thing. That righteous or that reference to an inheritance also reminds us of Hebrews 11, verse six, where the author said that without faith, it is impossible to please him.

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For he who comes to God must believe that he, that his God is, and that he, God, is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

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The faith that pleases God is a faith that acknowledges that there is a God and that this God will reward those who diligently seek after him.

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It is only because Abraham believed that God would keep his word, that he was willing to leave all of that and go to the land that God had promised.

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If Abraham did not believe that God would reward those who diligently seek him, Abraham would have never left.

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Because Abraham had in terms of this world and from the sight of his eyes, he had no reason at all to believe that anything would be better than what he had in Ur of the

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Chaldees. He had everything in Ur of the Chaldees. He was a wealthy man when God called him. He had a life there, a culture there, a civilization there.

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He was called to leave all of that and to go out to a place he had never seen and a place that he did not know and had never walked in.

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And Abraham was willing to leave all of that because he believed that God is and that God rewards those who diligently seek him.

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That is biblical faith. That is the kind of faith that pleases God. The faith that pleases God is a faith that says,

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I believe that if God has promised this, if I pursue this and I'm obedient to him, God will keep his word.

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If not in the short term, certainly in the long term. Even if obeying him costs me everything in this life and all

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I do is live as a pilgrim and a stranger and an alien in this world, even if I have to wait for the world to come,

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I believe that God will keep his word and he will fulfill everything that he has promised. That is the reward.

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And if you don't believe that, then you won't seek God. If you think the treasures of this world are more than worthy to be compared with what you think you might gain in the world to come, then you won't seek

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God. But if you believe that all the treasures of this world and all the kingdoms of this world are not worth anything compared to the inheritance that the righteous are promised, if you believe that, then you will pursue

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God and pursue obedience by faith. Without that faith, it is impossible to please him.

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The first mark of Abraham's faith was a willingness to leave everything. That is salvation.

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That is a perfect illustration of what salvation is. It's a perfect example of what it is, how it is that the righteous evaluate everything in this life.

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A willingness to turn our backs on it and to leave for another land. We're like Pilgrim in Pilgrim's Progress.

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We're striving after the celestial city and we're willing to leave kins and country behind us and to count all those things as loss for the sake of having

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Jesus Christ and his righteousness. That is biblical genuine faith. One last quote about faith by Spurgeon.

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Spurgeon said this, The faith that makes us obey is alone the faith which marks the children of God.

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It is better to have the faith that obeys than the faith that moves mountains. I would sooner have the faith which obeys than the faith which heaps the altar of God with sacrifices and perfumes his courts with incense.

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I would rather obey God than rule an empire for after all the loftiest sovereignty a soul can inherit is to have dominion over self by rendering believing obedience to the most high.

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Close quote. It is possible to rule an empire and never rule yourself. Seeing that, aren't we?

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It is possible to conquer empires and never conquer yourself.

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Never be able to conquer yourself because it is easier to conquer an empire than it is to obey when

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God asks us to obey. Obedience sometimes can be costly but the one with faith is willing to turn his back and to leave everything that this world offers.

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So that he may have what is promised in the inheritance which is in Jesus Christ. That is biblical faith.

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Let's pray. Our father, we are so grateful to you that you do this work of grace in our life.

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Thank you for pursuing sinners, for pursuing us, for opening our eyes and our hearts to Christ.

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Thank you for giving us this faith to obey, the faith to believe. Thank you for the gift of grace and the work of your spirit in our hearts.

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It is only because of your great grace that we can know that we stand before you forgiven and redeemed and accounted as righteous in your sight.

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And so we thank you that you have called us out of this world and into the kingdom, into the world that is to come and the kingdom of your dear son.

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Thank you for delivering us from darkness and making us sons of the light and giving us an inheritance with the saints in the light.

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We pray that you would do a work in our own hearts to give us grace to obey. Give us a quick heart that is ready to obey, quick to obey, not to compromise and not to negotiate with you, but simply to take you at your word, to trust, to walk with you and to walk in obedience.