"Examples of Faith: Abraham's Obedience" Hebrews 11:8
- This sermon was preached by our Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, on September 24, 2023.
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Audio Transcript
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Hebrews chapter 11. We’re continuing on with our examples of faith. Today we’re looking at the beginning of Abraham’s journey of faith, the one of obedience. So there’s this little quiz if you’ve been following along with the series. The first person was about the sacrifice of faith.
Someone that made a sacrifice to the point that they had to give up their life. Who made the sacrifice of faith in the Old Testament? Abel did. And then we had someone who walked with God and we had a message about the walk of faith. And that character was Enoch.
My star pupil here on the front row knows all the answers. Thank you, Mary. She gets kudos and a yellow star today. Okay then. Last time it was on the work of faith, someone who made a work of rather astronomical proportions.
Who was that? Noah built the ark. A work of faith. Today we’re looking at again Abraham, the journey of faith, obedience. And we read in Hebrews 11:8, by faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed and set out for a place that he was going to receive as an inheritance.
He went out even though he did not know where he was going. May we have a word of prayer? Heavenly Father, as we look at the text today and we think about the example of Abraham in the Old Testament. He would have been very familiar to those in the New Testament, Father remembering the father of their faith and the Jewish people. But help us to understand how real he was and how difficult and unusual this journey was that you called him to march out on.
Father, let us take encouragement how we too can have a hope to look forward to and be willing to follow you in obedience. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Back there in Hebrews 11:8, there’s a series of things for your bullets. Today we’re going to be looking at.
They’re not in quite the same order, but I put them in order of the way they occur. The first thing we’re going to look at briefly is Abraham. Then we’re going to look at his calling. We’re going to look at his faith, we’re going to look at his obedience, we’re going to look at his journey and we’re going to look at his hope. All of those terms are in the text.
By faith there’s faith. Abraham, he was called. That’s his calling. Obeyed his obedience. He set out.
That’s his journey. And he was going to receive an inheritance which was his hope. Now, who was Abraham? If we go back to Genesis 11, 10, 26, we see his heritage starting back with Noah. Noah had three sons, one was Shem, who fathered Arphaxid.
And that goes all the way down till we come to Abram’s father, Terah, who had three sons, Abram, Nahor and Haran. Now we know him as Abraham. But he was originally given the name Abram, just as his wife Sarah was originally Sarai, but God changed their names. Now, Abram, if he had been willing to travel, he could have still talked to Shem, Arphaxad, Eber, Ru, Serug, and his father Terah. The rest in his ancestry had passed away.
But there was still this knowledge that this transference of all the way back to Shem, who had been on the Ark, how God had been faithful all of these years. Abram would have had access to many of his relatives going all the way back to Shem. And those with lines through them on the screen were those that had passed away. Noah was a righteous man, and he gave a blessing to each of his sons and to Shem. He said that one day that his brothers would either serve him or live in his tents.
We take that to be a prophetic word that the Messianic Savior was going to come through the line of Shem. And so we find that Abram is called from the Lord. And we now learn that it’s very particularly going to be coming through his line. In Genesis 11:25:32, we read Terah. Abraham’s father lived 70 years, and he fathered Abram, Nahor and Haran.
These are the family records of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran fathered Lot. Haran died in his native land in the Ur of the Chaldeans. During his father’s lifetime, Abram and Nahor took wives.
Abram’s wife was named Sarai and. And Nahor’s wife was named Milcah. By faith, Abraham. What was the first thing that happened to him? Well, there was a calling in his life.
So we want to look what it means to have a calling from the Lord. Let’s go to the sermon that Stephen preached over in Acts chapter 7. I’ll read from verses 2 and 4.
Stephen said, Brothers and fathers, listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he settled in Haran. And he said to him, leave your country and relatives and come to the land that I will show you. Before Abraham did anything, before he had faith, as far as we know, before he obeyed and before he took his journey, God made the initial action in his life. God called Abraham.
God asked Abraham to Do things. He said, I want you to leave and I want you to come. It sounds very similar to the Genesis passage where it says a man should leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. That’s the picture that marriage is of our relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so it was that God was telling Abraham, I want you to leave and I want you to cleave.
I want you to come and have an intimate relationship with me. When God called Abraham, he called him to leave everything that was familiar. He called him to leave everything that was dear to him in order to follow him. It doesn’t list all these things in the Bible, but just stop and think. He had to leave his home that he was familiar with.
He had to leave the town that he had grown up in. He had to leave the country that he lived in. He left behind family, friends, work, food, activities, memberships, and any clubs, any everything that he was familiar with, everything that made him feel comfortable. God asked him to leave all of those things. And God, in the same way, when he calls us to follow him.
He may not ask us to go as far as Abraham did, but still the basic idea is there, that he wants us to be willing to give up anything and everything to follow him and have a relationship with him. Now, the good thing is God didn’t call Abraham and say, now I want you to go to that land and leave my presence. Instead, God said, I’m over here and I want you to come here and be with me. It wasn’t as if God was going to be farther away. But in being obedient, Abraham was going to draw closer to the Lord.
In the same way God calls all of us today to join him on his terms. He doesn’t call us to always stay where we are. He doesn’t always call us to live our lives on our own terms. But it’s always that you have to be willing to give up all of these things to follow me. It was definitely a call to change physical locations.
But more importantly, this was a call where Abraham was going to change his spiritual location. We refer to this as repentance in the Old Testament. And repentance means I’m going in a certain way. And in the life of every individual, they’re always asking the question, what pleases me today? What do I want to eat today?
What do I look forward to today? But when we come to repentance and faith, we turn and we say, I’m not going to ask what I want anymore. But now I’m saying God, I. What do you want me to do today? What should I do that pleases you?
So Abraham was called from this physical location. But it was showing this spiritual transformation. That he was going to follow God’s path instead of his own. He was going to call sin what God calls sin. And he was going to admit to others.
And he was going to demonstrate that the way he was living was the wrong way. That the right way now was. Was to follow God in God’s acceptable way.
God may call us to change our physical location and our circumstances in order to follow Him. But most importantly, he wants us to follow him spiritually, look to him for salvation and not ourselves. We find Jesus teaching this in Matthew, chapter 16, verses 24 through 25. Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it.
But whoever loses his life because of me will find it. The key terms there that I read are deny himself, take up his cross, lose his life. This is what God was calling Abraham to do. To deny everything that he loved and to take up this cross or a burden that was going to take him to a new land that he was not aware of. In the same way, if we want to follow Jesus, we have to be willing to deny ourself.
Instead of always asking, well, what pleases me today, we ask, what. What pleases God today? And we have to do this in every area of our lives. We have to be willing to give up our work, be willing to give up our home, be willing to give up our family, our activities, our enjoyments. God doesn’t always take those away from us.
But Abraham was this example of how we’re supposed to be willing to give all of these things up. But not only are we called to deny ourself, but we’re called to take up our cross. When we think about following Christ, we say, it is so simple, but it’s not easy. It’s simple in that all we have to do is trust Jesus that he died on the cross for our sins. He was buried and he rose from the dead.
And by placing our faith in him and making him the Lord of our life, we receive salvation. That simple. But it doesn’t mean that following the Lord is easy. Jesus told us that following him was going to be difficult. It was going to create hardships, it would create persecutions, it would create broken relationships.
And there would be some that would even die because of their faith, taking up their cross, whatever it was to bear it. In the same way, we have to be willing to carry all of these difficulties in our life. You know, in our country, it’s easy to share the gospel, but people don’t do it. It’s easy to share the gospel because we’re not calling people and telling them, you know, life is going to be difficult after you get saved. But I want to compare that to a Muslim country where if you share the gospel with someone, you’re telling them, if you make this decision today to follow Christ, when you go home, your belongings are going to be on the street because your family will have kicked you out.
Your parents are going to confiscate all the money in your bank accounts. You’re going to go to work tomorrow and they’re going to tell you you can no longer have a job here. Do you really want to give your life to Jesus Christ? Today they’re presenting to them what God sometimes does require. And that’s what God was asking Abraham to do, to give everything up.
But what a blessing it is. A calling is a wonderful opportunity. We read Jesus words in Matthew 11:28 30, where it says, come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
It doesn’t mean our cross is easy, but following Christ, what we are going to have given to us is now rest for our souls, maybe not rest for our feet, maybe not rest for our bodies, not rest from difficult relationships. But what’s more important is that Jesus promises us when we follow him, we’re going to have eternal spirit, soul rest. We know that we will live in this world at peace with the Lord and throughout eternity. The calling is also not just wonderful, but it’s difficult. The calling can be costly.
In Luke 14:26, Jesus tells us how costly this might be. If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, or wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Now Jesus was exaggerating. Here we’re supposed to love and honor our parents. That’s part of the Ten Commandments.
We’re supposed to love our wives and we’re supposed to provide for our children. But what he’s saying is, those things have to be less important to me if you’re going to come and follow me. The cost to follow Christ may always be what is most precious to us. But the question is, is Jesus worth it? And the answer is, yes, he is.
And so it was for Abraham. God said, come to me. Be willing to give everything up that you’re comfortable with. And Abraham was obedient. Now, was Abraham called because he was special?
Was he called because he was good looking or he had a wonderful wife or he had wonderful parents? Let’s see what Joshua says about him. In Joshua 24:2, Joshua said to all the people, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says. Long ago your ancestors, including Terah, the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River. And what he worshiped other gods.
Abraham was raised in a home where he was possibly worshiping many gods. Maybe Jehovah was one of those gods. But God didn’t call him because he was special. God called him because God loved him. And because of God’s mercy, he just chose Abraham.
And so it is with us today. God doesn’t choose us because we’re special. He chooses us because out of his mercy and his love for us, his calling of Abraham. God’s calling was based on God’s grace and love and mercy. It was not based on Abraham’s merit.
And so it is. We read in Titus 3:4,5, when the kindness of God, our Savior and his love for mankind appeared. He saved us not by works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy. God’s mercy, his kindness, his love is what calls us to have a relationship with him today. Back to Hebrews 11:8, we had Abraham.
He was called by the Lord and then he accepted that call by expressing faith. What is faith? Faith is placing our full confidence in God that He will do what he has promised. And what is it that he has promised? He has promised to save us from our deadly sin condition and to provide a place for us with him for eternity.
Faith is also placing our full confidence in God’s message. And, and that message, or the good news, is that Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, came and lived among us. He died on the cross to pay the penalty of our sin. He was buried and he rose from the dead. And that simply by accepting what he has done for us, we have a guaranteed gift that we’re going to have a right relationship with God that lasts forever.
Faith is saying, God, I believe that you’re telling me this is the way it is and I’m not depending on myself or anything else for it. Now Jesus, I mean Abraham didn’t know about Jesus, but he still had Faith that God would do one day what he had promised. There’s a familiar passage of Scripture in Ephesians, chapter two, verses one through nine. And I’ve kind of just got a new translation of it today. I put Abraham’s name in it so we can see how it.
It affected Abraham. And it applies to him just as much as it does to us today. You’ll see in brackets where I’ve made the changes. Abraham was dead in his trespasses and sins, in which he previously walked according to the ways of the world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. He being Abraham, previously lived among them in his fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of his flesh and thoughts.
And he was by nature a child under wrath, as the others were also a God who is rich in mercy because of his great love that he had for him. He made him alive with Christ even though he was dead in trespasses. He wasn’t saved by anything he did. Instead he was saved and by grace. For you, all of us and Abraham are saved by grace through faith.
This is not from yourselves. It wasn’t from Abraham. It is God’s gift, not from works, so that no one can boast. Placing our faith in what God has done is what brings us to true salvation. Going back now to Hebrews 11, there was a calling, there was faith.
But because of Abraham’s faith, we see an example of great obedience. We go back to Stephen’s sermon in Acts, chapter seven. Brothers and fathers, he replied, listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he settled in Haran. And he said to him last, leave your country and relatives and come to the land that I will show you.
And here we had the obedience. Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and he settled in Haran. And from there, after his father died, God had him move to this land in which you are now living. As far as we know, Abraham obeyed as quickly as he can. We don’t see any shadow of doubt that’s mentioned there.
After placing his faith in the Lord, there was immediate obedience on his part. What was he being obedient to? It was a journey. God’s saying, you have to come to me. You have to leave where you are.
So I just want us to think about that journey a little bit. I’m going to go. Two slides forward to Genesis 11:30, 32. And we read this. Sarai was unable to conceive that’s Abraham’s wife, she did not have a child.
Terah took his son Abraham, his grandson Lot, Haran’s son because Haran had died. And his daughter in law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife. And they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. And Terah lived 205 years and died in Haran.
What was this trip like? Abraham had grown up in Ur and he’s going to Babylon, which is about 50 miles away now for us jumping in our cars. 50 miles. We can be somewhere in an hour and 15 minutes here in Wisconsin. But you have to think they didn’t have cars back then.
If they had money, they had camels and they had donkeys or they had mules, maybe they had some horses. But here you have Abram packing up his wife, his nephew, his aged father, all their possessions. And they’re not putting it on a U haul van. They’re having to walk and take this on animals to travel. So you can imagine 50 miles was a long way.
Just think if you packed up all your kitchen dishes today and your kitchen table and chairs and that’s all you packed up. And you were going to walk 50 miles with that. And you’re also helping along your aged parent. How difficult that was. Only 50 miles of the trip.
Ur was this well established city with a population of probably of 100,000 people. And when you think of all that we’ve achieved in America since America began, it’s only hundreds of years, but this city had been there already for thousands of years. It had everything you could dream of. It had the great malls. It had a quick trip on every corner.
You know, it had Woodmans within five miles of driving distance every way. It had the best golf courses. Everything that was wonderful in that time was in this city because it was this great trading center. Abram had to leave that and then he went 50 miles to Babylon. But that isn’t where his journey ended.
From Babylon to Haran he had to travel another 600 miles. So think again. You’ve got all of your kitchen dishes and your kitchen table and your chairs. But you also need a bedroom and you need living room furniture and tools out of your shed. All of this stuff.
They didn’t go 50 miles. They went 60, 650 miles and then they went another 400 miles. So they had a trip. Walking most of the way or riding on animals with all of this stuff, not knowing where they were heading. And Then when they got to Shechem, they traveled another 20 miles to Bethel.
You can imagine his family saying, we have to go another 20 miles. We’ve already gone a thousand miles. You know, it’s probably a blessing they didn’t have any children at this time because over a thousand miles, every five miles it would have been, are we there yet? How much longer is it? Can we stop?
I need to go to the potty. I mean, it was an incredible journey. And they would have been stopping all along the way. And I don’t know, probably after the first five miles, the kids would have been saying, my legs hurt. Can you do what?
Can you carry me? So maybe Sarai was saying, can you carry me? Abraham? Hopefully she wasn’t a large woman.
You know, they left this wonderful place, and I’m sure it was difficult to leave, but I bet there were temptations along the way to stop and say, you know, we’ve really gone far enough. God, we’ve already gone 50 miles. Isn’t that enough? God, we’ve already gone 250 miles. So every time they got to a town, there would have been a temptation.
Can we just stop here? That first city they went to was Babylon. Ur was a great place. But when you got to Babylon, Let me just read what some historians wrote about it. Babylon the great, for some 1700 years stood as the queen city of the world.
Pliny, who was an historian, wrote it was the greatest city the sun ever shone upon its walls 300ft high and 75ft wide. That meant that a chariot with horses could ride on top of the walls and completely turn around. This was a big wall. And that wall, 300ft high and 75 wide, enclosed an area of 225 square miles. It had temples, palaces, fortresses, brazen gates, quays, artificial mountains and lakes made it one of the seven wonders of the world.
The river ran right through the middle of it, and it was so wide you couldn’t walk across it. They had to take boats from side to side. And here they come to this city that in comparison to Madison, would be two and a half times the size of Madison in land area, surrounded by a wall that was 300ft tall. This was a very, very large place. And if they thought that they had given up great shopping in Ur when they got to Babylon, they had even better restaurants and they had even better malls and better places to shop.
Everything was convenient. There were parks. They had built artificial mountains. There were the hanging gardens of Babylon that were considered one of the seven wonders of the World, it must in my mind have been a temptation. Can’t we just stay here for a little while?
But they continued on in their journey because Abraham was obedient to the Lord Almighty.
Genesis 12, 4, 6 says, so Abraham went as the Lord had told him. And Lot, he’s bringing his nephew with him. Abram wasn’t a young man when he started this journey. He was 75 years old when he left. This isn’t an 18 year old taking his 17 year old wife and walking to California.
This is a 75 year old man taking his aged father and everybody with him and walking to California. He took his wife, his nephew, all the possessions they had accumulated. And now they had also acquired people in Haran. They had servants, they had people living in their household. And they all set out for the land of Canaan.
And when they came to the land of Canaan, Abraham passed through the land to the side of Shechem and at the oak of Moreh. What a great journey it was that they went on. He was being obedient, but there was also this encouragement there. Because when we go back to Hebrews 11, God promised him an inheritance. So God promised him this inheritance which gave Abraham this great hope that kept him going on the way in his journey.
What was the hope we read in Genesis 12, 2, 3. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you.
I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt. And all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Abraham had a great hope and that hope encouraged him every step of the way. Yes, this journey is worthwhile. And it’s the same way with us that God gives us hope.
Not only that we have salvation in this world. Not only do we have peace and forgiveness and reconciliation with him, but we’re going to have a life in eternity with him, living in his presence. And if you don’t have that hope for the future, it makes it impossible to be willing to obey God in every step of the journey that he gives to you. Abraham calling faith, obedience, journey, hope. But I want to add one other word today, and that word is demonstration.
It’s not in the Hebrews 11 passage, but we find it back in Genesis 12, 7, 9. After Abraham was called, after he had faith, after he obeyed, after he went on this long journey because of his hope, there was a demonstration in his life that he loved the Lord and that he was going to worship the Lord. The Lord appeared to Abraham and Said to your offspring, I will give this land. So what did he do? He built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him.
Abraham’s faith was not just an internal thing. He wasn’t trying to hide it from anyone. When he got to this new place, he built a very tangible demonstration that I worship Jehovah. He didn’t place an idol there. He didn’t put up Asherah poles.
He built an altar to the Lord so that people knew who he stood for. But from there, in verse eight, it says he moved on to the hill country east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent. He moved to a different place. And with Bethel on the west and AI on the east, he made another demonstration of his faith to everybody who lived there. In that new place.
It says he built an altar to the Lord there. And he called on the name of the Lord. And then Abram journeyed by stages to the Negev, where he went. He demonstrated his faith outwardly to everyone who he was serving, even in the midst of this pagan land where he could have been deceived and thinking, well, I need to fit in. I need to try not to look too different because I want people to accept me.
He let them know right away, I am different because I serve the Lord. So it comes now to Romans 10, 9, 10. And we need to examine our own relationship with the Lord. Has there been a calling in your life to follow him? And if you say, I don’t remember God calling me, well, today he’s calling you just by fact that you’ve heard this message, that he extends the same thing to you.
Come and follow me, all you who are weary, and I will give you rest. And then the next step. Did you respond to that calling in faith that you turned away from going your own way to going God’s way and accepting his way of salvation? And was that faith followed by obedience in your life that you said, lord, because I placed my faith in you, now I’m willing to do whatever you want me to do. And you should be in that throughout the rest of your life.
If you’ve truly come to faith in Christ, are you on the journey that God has called you to do? You daily say, God, do you want me to move? Do you want me to change my job? Do you want me to have different relationships? Is there something you want me to move on in this journey of faith?
And if we truly have faith in the Lord, we’re going to say, yes, God, I want to do all those things. Do we have hope in our Life. Are we looking forward to Jesus return or is it something we’re wanting to put off because we’re dreading it? And lastly, are we daily, wherever we go, when we go to work, when we change neighborhoods? Do people see a demonstration in your life that you follow the Lord?
Romans 10, 9, 10 says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. That’s the inward understanding and belief of what you need to do. But then there’s not only this belief with the heart resulting in righteousness, but it says that one then confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation. And that is your demonstration of faith to other people. That I follow the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is what he’s done for me. And being like Abraham and following his example, we should be willing to do that continually with anyone we meet in any and every place. I challenge you today. Look where you are. Have you been through the calling, the faith, the obedience, the journey, hope?
And is there a demonstration? If you can say yes to all of that, then that is a great comfort that Jesus Christ truly is your Lord and Savior. But if you have doubts about any of those, you don’t see some of those things in your life, there is something amiss. And I encourage you to talk to me, talk to Hunter, talk to Mary, talk to someone. Because we want all of you to have assurance of your salvation.
You truly do have the hope that you will be in eternity with the Lord. May we pray? Heavenly Father, we once again thank you for your word. Help us to examine our lives and apply it to our hearts and make those changes that you desire for us to make. Thank you that you provided all that we need for the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
That you give it to us as a free gift out of your great love, your mercy and your kindness, not based on anything that we do. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.