(Hebrews - Part 35): How Abraham Knew He Was Called — A.W. Tozer

Abraham’s Call and the City Built by God

Now in Hebrews 11, 8 -10, 8 By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for inheritance, obeyed. And he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.

For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Now I haven't selected this for the morning. It comes in consecutive order as we're studying the book of Hebrews these Sunday mornings.

Abraham, when he was called. And I have been thinking about the critical moments that are in the life of people. Naturally the first and most critical moment is the time of our birth. For a birth is a promise or a warning or a prophecy or a portent or all of those things.

Birth as a Sign of Future Consequences

I was thinking that about 72 or 73 years ago there was a family by the name of Schickelgruber, quite a long name. They had some children and then the midwife came out smiling and said to Mr. Schickelgruber, you have a son.

He tried to look pleased, maybe he was. But he could hear a little thin wail, that little wail that's human and yet not quite like anything human. It's the sound of a newborn baby crying. If there had been a prophet there with ability to see the future, I'm sure that he would have heard in the wail of that newborn baby a threat to the human race.

I'm sure of it. I'm sure that he would have recoiled in horror at what he was hearing, for that little baby grew up to be Adolf Hitler. And a little later than that, maybe 20 years later than that, another boy was born in that same country into a home by the name of Eichmann.

And they said to the waiting father, it's a boy. And six million Jews might have recoiled at that and the whole world shuddered. For that boy was Adolf Eichmann, who was personally responsible, so it's charged and so I think it has been proved, for the murder of about six million human beings made in the image of God, who just a few days ago was hanged by the neck until dead for his crime.

And they tried to pay with one dollar of human life, six million dollars of death, which they never of course could pay. Now those two births, if we think of them on the horror side of the ledger, they were portents and warnings and threats to the human race.

David’s Birth and His Future Psalm

But I think of another family, a man by the name of Jesse had quite a family of boys. There were eight of them, anywhere from good-sized boys half grown up to tiny little chaps. And then they came out and said to Jesse, you've got another boy.

And with that attempt at sickly humor that fathers have at times like that, he might have said, what could I do with another boy? We've got eight. And smiled self-consciously. But they said, why don't we name him?

They had all the names used up with those eight boys and a lot of girls. But now they said, well, let's just name him David. He'll be the last one. Let's call him David. And that was David, the son of Jesse.

And if the prophet had been present there that day when they brought the little wriggling pink bit of humanity out, trying to work up a cry when there was nothing to cry over, you know how they do? And wailing his little protest to the world.

If there'd been a prophet there who could foresee the future, they'd have said, treat him very, very carefully. He's going to write the 23rd Psalm. Keep him, handle him carefully now because you've got to keep him going.

Keep him living because when he grows up and has had his time out with his sheep under the stars, he's going to write the 23rd Psalm. And out of the 23rd Psalm, there is going to grow hymn after hymn and anthem after anthem, and it's going to sing its way around the world, this 23rd Psalm.

So be careful of this boy. There was a prophecy. This boy's birth. I say that there are things that are critical and important and prophetic and that are warnings or threats or predictions. And birth is one.

Marriage as a Critical Decision

And I suppose I couldn't get away from it, this being the month of June. What is so rare as the day in June? Then have ever come wedding days. And this is the day when, the month when people marry. Why, I would never know that they do.

That is, I mean, why they'd choose this month, not why they'd marry. I think we all know about that. But why they would choose June? But they do. And that reminds us that getting married is a long way from being the casual thing that people may get out to be in our time.

It's very casual now. People get married as they might buy a car or a cottage in the woods or go for a trip to Maine. Just something they'll do. And if they don't like it, they won't do it. But under God, a wedding is a mighty important matter.

And it's odd, isn't it, that nature has so arranged it that when two people are doing the most important thing they'll ever do, probably, neither one of them can see. You know, both of them are blind and emotionally so groggy that it's impossible for reason to have any words at all.

And yet if one of the most important things in the world is getting married, I want to remind you, there wouldn't be any reason to say anything about it to some of you, but to others of you who are looking forward, I say, don't rush into it and don't get stampeded into it and don't get pushed psychologically into it.

I started running around with a young woman and everybody began to say they're going to get married and he heard it and accepted it and from that on he was just there. He was psychologically in bondage to the public and the Christian community around about him.

So he got married and while he never told me in so many words, I have every reason to believe that he never planned it that way at all. He was squeezed into it by the pressure of public opinion. Don't allow that to happen and don't allow merely the desire to get married.

There are lots of worse things than not being married and one of them is being married to the wrong person. It's a most critical thing. But I say, well, birth and marriage and the choice of a job and lots of other things, they're very important.

The Call of God as Life’s Most Vital Moment

The most vital moment in the life of any man or woman is when he or she is called. Abraham, when he was called, notice that poem, there's a time factor, a mark. You put a stake down and you say, that was the time, Abraham, when he was called.

Abraham was called and that was the most vital moment in his life and anything that he did after that or before that was nothing compared with what he did at that moment when he was called. Now, most persons live as sons of one role.

They come into the world like puppies. They're born into the world like kittens or lambs or hatched like birds and their education is for life here below. They're strictly one-worlders. They believe in this world below and they're educated for it.

They follow Herbert Spencer, whether they know it or not, in educating themselves to live with people, to make a living and take care of their own health and so on, the famous five points of Spencer. But it's all for down here.

It's all for this life. There isn't anything to do with God. The idea of God or the thought of God comes rather remotely and it sounds unreal because they've been educated for the world below. And then to some there comes a critical moment, the call.

Moses, Jacob, and the Varied Circumstances of God’s Call

The time and the circumstance vary very widely indeed. There was Moses and he was called while he was out keeping sheep under the brow of Horeb. And God said to him, I have heard the cry of my people and I have seen what's happening to them and I want to send thee.

Go to Pharaoh and say, let my people go. Moses tried to twist out of it, but the call had come upon him. He'd been struck from above. The wound of God had been laid on his forehead and he couldn't get away from it.

That was Moses. That was one set of circumstances. Then there was another man by the name of Jacob and Jacob was in the waste howling wilderness, running away from a bad situation at home, when suddenly he saw a ladder set up on the earth and the angels of God ascending and descending on it and God standing above it.

And God spoke to him there and God spoke to various others under various circumstances down the years. It doesn't make any difference where you are or quite when it is, whether it's a holy day or whether it's Monday morning, just at breakfast when nobody is quite awake.

It doesn't make any difference about that. It's does the call of God come to you? And the call of God came to these men under varying circumstances. Now, there is one clear call that comes to some people.

The Universal Gospel Invitation and the Need to Hear

Maybe not to all, but to some people. The call of God is for everybody, but not everybody hears it. The gospel invitation is to everyone. The scripture asserts this very clearly, that most persons are too preoccupied to hear the call.

They know it in a way, but it never becomes an incident. And that is true of most Christians. Their religion never becomes an incident. Their relation to God never becomes an encounter. It is never anything that takes place.

It is something they know vaguely, but that's about it. Then comes that one clear call, and they do hear it then. If it's to that, that man does hear it. Many live and die and never hear it, but some do hear it.

Abraham heard it. If there was no other reason why you ought to get still and wake once in a while, it is maybe God's been trying to get you when your line's busy. Maybe God's been trying to reach you and can't because you've been preoccupied.

Stillness and the Capacity to Think

This American idea that has certainly come over to Canada too, that the go-getter is your man. The go-getter, the man who never allows himself for one minute to be still, he's your man. He's the man who'll turn the world over.

I remember hearing of an old Quaker lady. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was boasting to her, in a good-natured way, how he'll live. He said, when I get up in the morning, while I'm putting on my clothes, I am memorizing Greek.

While I am shaving, I am memorizing something else. And while I'm at breakfast, then he has something else he was doing. And she listened unimpressed, and when he had recited how he used every minute of the day in some intellectual pursuit, she said, my friend, when does thee think?

And it's necessary sometimes that we stop and think. Some of the most useful things you can do is to do nothing at all for a little bit. Sometimes you can go the fastest by not going at all, and you can go the farthest by standing still, and you can talk the loudest by not saying a word.

Abraham’s Readiness to Hear God

Abraham was down in Ur of the Chaldees, and tradition says he was an idol-maker in the home of his father. Of course, he knew not Jehovah, the God that we say now, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

He was not yet the God of Abraham, but he was listening. He was hearing some busy people cannot hear. I know people that are so socially minded that they will be in misery if they are by themselves. One young fellow said to his father, a doctor, he was in the hospital, this young chap, he said, Dad, bring me a record player, something, he said.

If I don't keep busy hearing something, I have to think, and it's hell to think. Because he lived the kind of life he'd live, it was hell to think. But Abraham didn't find it hell. I don't know how much Abraham had to do with all this.

Prevenient Grace and Human Responsiveness

We will allow the Calvinists and Arminians to argue this all out. I believe that God is always previous, and I believe in prevenient grace, and I believe that if God hadn't spoken first, Abraham never would have spoken to God.

I believe that if God hadn't moved toward Abraham, Abraham never would have moved toward God, I believe that. But I also believe that if Abraham had not had his ear cocked to another world than this, he'd never have heard the voice of God when it came.

Abraham, when he was called, and what a critical moment that was in the life of Abraham. Abraham had set his jaw and said, I'm not going to fool with this religion business, and had gone back making bigger and better idols, the whole history of the world would have been different.

Mark it, the whole history of the world would have been different. And different for the worse. It says here that Abraham was called, that one, and he was called to go out. Now, Abraham was negative. Abraham was called to go out.

Abraham Called Out of Idolatry

He was called to go out, that's so. There he was, but the place where he was wasn't the right place. He was in Ur making idols, and that wasn't the right place for him. Eternal God had something better for him, so he called him out.

Ur was not God's place for Abraham. In order to become a friend of God, he had to go out from where he was. Now, there is the offense of the cross. Nobody cares how religious you are, particularly in this present moment, in this what they call the intellectual ferment that's going on now.

The Exclusivity of Christ and the Offense of the Cross

As a boy on the farm, I know what happens when things ferment, and I'm a little worried about that expression. But this moment we're in now, this cross-religious moment, or moment of cross-religion, it's quite respectable now to be religious, though I well remember not too long ago, after the First World War, when it was highly unrespectable to be a believer in God.

Now, at last, we have made terms with religion, and the world says it's all right to believe, provided you don't believe anything very much, and provided what you believe doesn't change you very much, and again, provided what you believe doesn't reflect unkindly upon somebody that doesn't believe.

Catholics, Jews, Gentiles, atheists, unbelievers can all get together on a panel discussion with the idea that each is expressing his viewpoint, and then shake hands and go out and have a soda. Nothing matters much anyhow, whether Jews are right, or the Catholic and the Pope are right, or whether the Protestant gospels are right, or whether the atheists are right, that's nothing to worry about.

The point is, we've fermented, we have had the dialogue, we have aired our beliefs and tossed it back and forth like budgies in a cage, talking to each other but not knowing what we're saying. So, Christianity is all right, provided you don't let it become exclusive.

Christianity is perfectly all right, just so long as you don't say, this is the only religion there is, and Christ is the only hope there is, and through Christ alone men reach God. As soon as you say that, you're dead.

They say, he's a dogmatist, take him out. They'll have nothing to do with the fellow after that, because he dares to believe not that there are several ways to heaven, but one way. One thing the call of Christ does to us, one thing the call of Christ does is to call us out.

Abraham, when he was called, he was called to go out. So he was called to go out because where he was wasn't the right place. I'll tell you this again, I told you this a couple of years ago now, but I want to repeat it.

Billy Nicholson and the Cost of a Call

Some of you know the Irish evangelist who has just now gone to heaven, maybe less than a year ago, by the name of Billy Nicholson. I personally knew Billy Nicholson, he was one of my good, warm friends, and used to write me long, happy letters in Irish dialect.

But he was a great man, he was one of the greatest evangelists of his day. Saved Ireland, they tell us, from rebellion, from revolution. And won people to God by the thousands. Well, he was called to go to a certain church.

Now, I'm not going to mention the name of that church, if I can help it, but if it slips in, I won't be too sorry. It was a certain denomination of church. They called him in and they said, we'd like to have you put on an evangelistic service here.

He said he'd be glad to do it. Well, they said, the pastor, after he got there, the pastor called him up and said, one thing about it, Mr. Nicholson. He said, we live in this town, it's a liquor town, and some of my people are involved in manufacturing liquor.

He said, in fact, the chairman of the board of the church runs a brewery, and he's also the town undertaker. And he said, I'd just like, if you don't mind, just preach all you want to and be free, but if you don't mind, for my sake, would you just not say anything about liquor?

Well, that first night, the brother got up, Billy Nicholson got up and preached on John 3 .16, and the pastor was in the seventh heaven. He didn't mention anything, only the love of God. And the pastor said, well, won't this be wonderful?

We'll get all the benefits of this Irishman's evangelism, his evangelistic ministry, and never have any trouble at all. So he preaches on love, wonderful. The next night, Billy got up, walked to the edge of the platform and said in his very pronounced Irish bro, he said, Ladies and gentlemen, I understand that you have a man on the board of your church who makes liquor to damn people's souls.

And he said, also, he's an undertaker so that he can bury them when they die and go to hell. And then he lit in from there on. That was Billy. Now, do you know what they did? They closed the church on him and locked the door.

Billy never got another chance at that church. He told me that was the only time he'd ever been locked out of his church. Well, you see, if Billy had just allowed them to drop in their liquor, if he had just allowed them to stew in their gin, there'd never been any trouble.

But he believed that when Jesus Christ called a man, he called him out. He called him out from the old life of idol making and idol worshiping. And now I think maybe Billy might have been more, what would you say, tactful than that.

But that was Billy Nicholson. And when he did try to be tactful one time, he said to the Lord, they criticized him for not being tactful. So he said, I went to the Lord and I said, Now, Lord, from now on, I'm going to use my college education, for he was a college educated man.

And he said, I'm going to be tactful. And he did, and the power of God left him and he couldn't get anyplace. As soon as he went back to not being tactful, the power of God fell on him again. Now, what I'm trying to say, all told, is this, that as long as we just accept religion as another phase of our total twentieth century civilization and don't make it mean much, nobody will bother us.

But as soon as we teach that the call of Christ means a call out, they'll get on us right away. That Abraham was called to go out. But I want you to notice another thing, too. Another preposition lies alongside of that one, and it's the preposition, into.

Called Out of Sin and Into God’s Purposes

He was called to go out into. Here's the difficulty in some churches, they're always against something and never for anything. The only reason I'm ever against anything is because I'm for something. I'm for something and that makes it necessary for me to be against certain things.

So Abraham was against idol-making in order that he might be on the side of God and the new land. God called him to go out into, and said to Abraham, Come, and I will show thee the land unto which I have called thee, in which I will give thee and thy seed.

So the call of God is always into. Keep that in mind. God calls you into what? He calls you into eternal life. He calls you into holiness of living. He calls you into fellowship with his Son. He calls you into a life of fruitfulness and usefulness.

He calls you into purity of heart. He calls you to walk with him as Enoch walked with him. He calls you into. He calls you into the sweetest fellowship in all the world, the fellowship of Christians. He calls you into something, but in order to do it, he has to call you out of where you are, because where you are isn't the right place.

You were born on the wrong side of the road. So God calls you over, across, into the right side. And then remember, too, that what he calls you away from isn't anything compared to what he calls you into.

What Believers Receive When They Follow God

I get a lot of sour amusement out of these half-converted opera stars and half-converted singers who tell about how they nobly gave up at the altar. Beating the bench with tears, they gave up an opera career.

Couldn't sweep off the stage. But they gave up an opera career to follow the Lord, and they give the impression that the Lord should reward them particularly because of what they gave up. Well, granted, they gave something up.

I've never met one yet that gave up anything. Always they couldn't quite make good and found that if they got into religion, they'd make good there. The fellow that can't sing a lick well enough to sing an opera can always manage to stagger by in churches.

And the man who is unable to toot a horn, they wouldn't have him even in jazz orchestra. He can talk to the Young People's Society and get a reputation and be called around. He says, I gave up. You know what you gave up, Junior?

God bless you. You didn't give up anything. God called you to himself. What did I give up when I got converted? I gave up the rubber factory. I was working making tires in a rubber factory, and I gave that up.

I was scared half to death, and I gave that up. I was miserable and gave that up. I was covered with sin, and I gave that up. I had ambitions to do so many things, none of which I ever would have accomplished, and I gave that up.

But what did I get called into? Well, I gave up certain friends, I admit that. I gave up certain friends. I didn't have the experience of being madly in love with a worldling and giving her up in order that I might be a Christian, because I met my wife in the basement of a Methodist church, and I hadn't had any girlfriends before that, so that was out.

But I didn't give up anything that was worthwhile, but what I got was everything. If God takes away from you an old beat-up dollar bill and hands you back the mint and says, Here, the mint's yours, help yourself, God called Abraham out for making idols.

If Abraham had ever thought to grumble about it, God would then go back and make idols. But God called him out and gave him a whole land and said, Kings are in your loins. You will be the father of the Messiah.

Down the long line from Abraham on down to Mary, you will be in line for the Messiah. Now, the blessing that came to him because he got out. Now, that's the only reason I tell people that they ought to get out from the world, in order that they might get in.

The Danger of Opposition Without a Positive Calling

You know, the Puritans, they used to say about them, I don't think it was true at all, but they used to say about the Puritans that they opposed bear-baiting. And they said they didn't oppose bear-baiting because they pitied the bear, but they opposed bear-baiting because they didn't want the people to have any fun baiting bears.

I believe that that is a scurrilous remark and don't believe it's true. But I have met people who I'm afraid were just a little bit on that bear-baiting side of things. They're always against. I got a letter and now I've got a bunch of books.

Preaching the Holy Spirit to Those in Need

I'm going up to Minnesota in between Sundays, and of all things I'm going to preach on the baptism of the Holy Ghost. And who do you suppose I'm preaching it to? A bunch of Lutherans. They've invited me to come and given me my subject, told me to come preach up to us on this subject.

Well, I got a letter from a fellow who was taking me to task, warning me and telling me not to go near those Lutherans. He said, don't you do it. They're not Orthodox. I can't help it. Imagine, will you, if you were to call up a doctor and say, don't go near that man, he's sick.

Don't go near him, he's sick. Of course, that's why the doctor goes. I'm saying to a school teacher, don't you go near that little boy. He can't read. We should go there to teach him to read. And so, my good Lutheran friends, I had never met him.

I don't know one. I know one fellow among them. Outside of that, I know nobody, but I'm going up there and preach a series of sermons on the Holy Ghost. I preached here at Avenue Road Church. This man that wrote me, he warned me, he said, don't you know they're using you?

He said, they're going to use you. I don't know how they can use me. I've never been used yet. And I'm too old to start now, but I'm going to preach on God, the Holy Ghost, and what he can do in the lives of men that let him.

And I'm going to tell them what God calls them into. And I say, come out, come out in order that you might get in. Abraham obeyed, and I'm finished. Abraham obeyed. By faith, Abraham obeyed. Faith gave him the grand courage to go out, to leave all the old safe mess, his pension, and his seniority, and that comfortable chair, and the change, and the loss, and the human uncertainty that came to him.

He became a pilgrim now, to wait and to look upon God. Lost his social security, lost his friends. At his age, every piece of furniture in the house fit him. You know, if you sit in a long enough, they come to fit you.

Everything fit him around there. Everything was comfortable. You know, just where to sit and when, and everybody knew what Abraham would do. God said, I want you to get out of this whole comfortable place and follow me.

Abraham had good spiritual sense enough to obey God. He got up and went. He went because and says it so much more beautifully than I've said it. He says, because he regarded the city, because he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

He never did quite believe in the permanency of the city where he lived. He never quite believed in the permanency of that home of his, never. Never quite believed in the permanency of the job of making idols.

Something in his heart placed there by God disturbed him and made him discontented and troubled. And when God said, Abraham, come out, he went immediately and followed God. As Bud Robinson said, Abraham went out not knowing where he was going, but he knew who was going with him.

And that's all you have to know. He looked for a city. He was interested in something that has permanence, whose builder and maker is God. That's life's summum bonum, the end after which the human race strives and doesn't know it.

Jerusalem, wrote the old monk, Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blessed beneath thy contemplation, sink heart and voice oppressed. I know not, oh, I know not what social joys are there, what radiancy of glory, what wealth beyond compare.

Abraham saw that way back there. Jesus said, Abraham saw my day and was glad. He looked at the city and he left his little town. And he went out with no town, nothing but a tent, because he was seeing a city.

And as he went, he might have said, for thee, O dear, dear country, mine eyes, their vigils keep. For very love beholding thy happy name, they weep. The mention of thy glory is unkind to the breast, and medicine, and sickness, and love, and life, and rest.

He dedicated himself to eternal things, and I don't have to make a case for it. The long glory-studded history of Abraham is its own justification. God bless the man who heard a voice, who obeyed it, who went out and in, in obedience to a heavenly call.

God make us like Abraham, at least in this. Amen.