"Examples of Faith: Abraham's Staying Faith" Hebrews 11:9
- Our Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on October 1, 2023.
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Audio Transcript
Hebrews 11, 9. We’re looking at examples of faith in Hebrews. First we looked at Abel. He was the sacrifice of faith. Enoch was the walk of faith.
Noah was the work of faith. And now we’re looking at Abraham, the obedience of faith. We looked last week how he left where God called him from and went on a huge journey with all of his belongings and family to a new land. And today we’re going to look at the fact that not only did he obey and journey by faith, but he stayed by faith in the land. You know, many expect that the life of faith in Christ is going to lead to the solution to all problems.
Or they come to faith in Christ thinking that he’s going to ease all of their pain, and they think that they might have complete victory over temptation. But that’s not what Jesus promised us. It’s very simple to place our faith in what we are asked to believe in God. But it is not an easy journey. It’s filled with many difficulties.
And that’s the example that we find in Abraham today. Here. Abraham, the prime example of faith for us. He was the first father of Judaism. He was the ancestor of our Savior.
He’s the father of the people that received and preserved God’s Word for us today. And he’s the father of the Christian faith. Let’s read in Hebrews 11:8 from last week and then from 11:9 today. 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.
And by faith, he stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, coheirs of the same promise. May we have a word of prayer? Heavenly Father, we thank you that our faith is not a blind faith. We have your word. We thank you for the example, Father, of others that have victoriously walked through this life, having faith in you, having assurance of their salvation.
Father, we thank you for Abraham’s example that we’re going to look at today, Father, that in the midst of all these troubles and trials that he has, that he still stayed in the land. Father, faithful to you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. By faith he stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, coheirs of the same promise.
Abraham was obedient in going to the land of promise. And after the long journey and how difficult it was and everything that he gave up, the things that we talked about last week, you would expect that God would say, you know, Abraham, you deserve an easy life now because you’ve done so much already. But being a foreigner in a strange land was not easy. And living in tents for the rest of your life was certainly not an easy lifestyle. But Abraham continued to obey the Lord and to stay.
Once again. It was simple for him to obey the Lord, just to do what the Lord asked him to do. But it was not easy. Easy to follow him. And so it is.
Abraham is the example of what it means to stay with God and to stay where God has called you to live. He’s an example of us staying in the midst of pressures, problems, difficulties and temptations that continue to come after us even in the Christian life. You know, he had faith, but it was not his faith that carried him through all of these things. It was the fact that he placed his faith in something more powerful than himself. He placed his faith in God Almighty.
Our faith is worthless if we place it in a person. Our faith is worthless if it’s in ourself. It’s worthless if it’s in a false God. But if we place our faith, faith in God, it is God that will carry us through all of these pressures, problems, difficulties and temptations. Because God is the only true source of peace and strength in this evil world.
Where the citizens of this world are destined to eternal damnation because of their all encompassing sin problem. And we still live in the midst of that sin. We’re affected by our own sin and were affected by the sin of others, but were also affected by the fact that sin still rules in this world. And Jesus told us the same in John 16:33, that we would have problems. Let’s read his words there.
I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. But in the midst of this peace, Jesus said, you will have suffering in this world. But be courageous because not of our conquering the world, but Jesus said, I have conquered the world. Let’s go back to Genesis chapter 12. We’re going to be looking at chapters 12 through 14 with Abraham’s life.
And we’re not going to spend a lot of time here. But we just want to review what he had to go through. He’s just moved his whole family. He’s moved everything that he has. And as soon as he gets to the land, it says that there was a famine in the land.
So Abraham had to go down to Egypt to stay there for a while. Because it wasn’t just an ordinary famine, it was a severe famine. He picked up his home. He picked up his tent, he picked up all his belongings, he picked up his relatives. There was a large group of people that were traveling with him, that were his servants, that were in his household.
And then I mentioned he took his farm with him too, because he had to take all of his animals, all of his livelihood because of this famine that was in his life. It wasn’t like he had a winter home in Florida as a snowbird. You know where he could go? Down there. And he has his condo and his hot tub and everything’s nice.
And then he knows he can come back to his home here. No, he had to pick everything up to go and be a foreigner in a strange land. But it wasn’t only a famine that he faced. The next thing is that there was temptation in his life. And so it is in our life.
We’re still faced with continual temptations not to trust the Lord. Let’s go to Genesis, chapter 12, 11, 13. And this is what we read. When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife, sarai, look, I know what a beautiful woman you are. And when the Egyptians see you, they will say, this is his wife.
They will kill me but let you live. Please say you’re my sister, so it will go well for me because of you. And my life will be spared on your account. The hero of faith was still tempted not to trust God. Abraham didn’t always act in the faith that he had.
And just like Abraham, we’re so much like this. He trusted in God for his future, for this promise that was coming. But he couldn’t trust God in a simple, small thing in his everyday life. You know, if God can achieve the greater things in our life, why do we doubt his power that he can control the lesser things? Because God has created all things.
He can control all things. Abraham faced the temptation. He gave into that temptation not to trust the Lord. And God still blessed him and brought him through that. But not only did he find a temptation in Egypt, but he also found enmity with a world leader.
I’ll read in verse 14. When Abraham entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. Pharaoh’s officials saw her and praised her to Pharaoh. So the woman was taken to Pharaoh’s household. He treated Abraham well because of her.
And Abram acquired flocks and herds, male and female donkeys, male and female slaves and camels. Isn’t it interesting that he was not trusting the Lord? But even in his sin, he’s still accumulating blessings in his life. He could have Continued in that lie. But he didn’t.
Because the Lord struck Pharaoh and his household with severe plagues because of Abram’s wife, Sarai. And Pharaoh sent for Abram and said, what have you done to me? Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? Why did you say, she’s my sister, so that I took her as my wife. Now here is your wife.
Take her and go. And then Pharaoh gave his men orders about him. And they sent him away with his wife and all he had. We all have enmity with people in our life. But there are some people in your life that you don’t really want to have enmity with.
You certainly don’t want a world leader, the leader of a major country, to be upset with you. But that was what happened to Abram because he was following the Lord. What happens next? We find family discord happens in his life. And so it is when we follow the Lord.
Often there’s discord in our family life because of our faith in following the Lord. We read in Genesis 13, 5, 7, it says that Lot, who was traveling with Abram, also had flocks, herds, and tents. This is his nephew. Abram’s brother had died. And Abram had taken this young man or his boy, at whatever his age, under his care.
And now he’s a grown man, and he is being successful. And it tells us the land was unable to support them as long as they stayed together. For they had so many possessions that they could not stay together. And it was just natural they were going to have to separate. But there was discord there.
It tells us in verse seven that there was quarreling between the herdsmen of Abram’s livestock and the herdsmen of Lot’s livestock. So Abram said, lot, I’m going to be really gracious here. You just choose whatever you want. If you want the best land, you take that, and I’ll go the rough way. And if you want the rough way, then I’ll take the best land.
And what did his appreciative nephew do? He chose the best land for himself. Just nixed everything that his uncle had done for him. And they were separated at that point from each other. There was family discord.
Because when we are on our journey of faith, it isn’t always easy to follow the Lord. But then we come to Genesis 14.
Famine, temptation, enmity, discord. Now we’re in warfare. Let’s read in verses 13. And before this, we have to realize that Lot, Sodom, Gomorrah, everyone in that area had been taken off by an enemy. And what we find is that one of the survivors from that group of people came and told Abram the Hebrew.
And when Abram heard that his relative had been taken prisoner, he assembled his 318 trained men, you see the size of his household, and they went in pursuit as far as Dan. And he and his servants, deployed against them by night, defeated them and pursued them as far as Hobah, to the north of Damascus. He brought back all the goods, also his relative lot and his goods, as well as the women and the other people. As if he wasn’t having enough difficulties, Abram is confronted with actually going to war. It was part of the difficulties that God allowed him to go through because he was following the Lord in a simple faith.
But it was not an easy journey. This is all an example of of a true doctrine that we hold to and it’s called the perseverance of the saints, or some would call it the eternal security of the believer, which expresses the fact that God continues to maintain our salvation no matter what happens to us. Wayne Grudem explains it this way, or he defines it this way. He says the perseverance of the saints means that all those who are truly born again will be kept not by their own power or will, but by God’s power, and they will persevere as Christians until the end of their lives, and that only those who persevere until the end have been truly born again. Let me read his further explanation of this.
This definition has two parts. It indicates first that there is assurance to be given to those who are truly born again, for it reminds them that God’s power will keep them, will keep us as Christians until we die, and we will surely live with Christ in heaven forever. But on the other hand, the second half of the definition makes it clear that continuing in the Christian life is one of the evidences that a person is truly born again. It is important to keep this aspect of the doctrine in mind as well, because we don’t want to give false assurances to any people who were never really believers in the first place. Like Abraham, true believers will stay the course in the midst of all the difficulties of life.
They continue on their journey of faith to the end. But those that do not continue in the journey, we have to say they never really placed their faith in the Lord. There was something there that was not complete. It was only partial. Let’s look at some Scripture verses that support this teaching today.
Let’s go to the words of Jesus in John chapter 6, where I read from verses 38 and 40, John 6, 38 and 40. Jesus said, For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. This is the will of him who sent me that I should lose none of those he has given me, but should raise them up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him will have eternal life. And I will raise him up on the last day.
The repeated word over and over. There is will. And it’s not our will, but it’s God’s will. It’s the Father’s will that Jesus is talking about. And it’s not because of our will.
It’s not because of our parents will, it’s not because of anybody else, but it’s because of God’s will that we can have certainty that we’re going to persevere in our faith. It is in God’s will that true believers persevere. And it is in God’s will that Jesus says that he will lose none. This is the will of the Father, Jesus says positively and completely, encouragingly. It’s not a maybe.
He says, definitely I will raise him, meaning those that place their faith in him up on the last day. Let’s go over to John, chapter 10, verses 27 through 30. And again we have this promise reiterated in a different way by our Lord and Savior. John 10:27 says, My sheep, hear my voice. This is Jesus talking.
He says, I know them and they follow me. He says, I give them eternal life and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. And my Father who has given them to me is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.
I and the Father are one. The promise isn’t for a temporary life. The word that describes the life that Jesus promises us is eternal. And then he says that we will never perish. And that word never there is very, very strong in the Greek.
It means that they shall certainly not perish forever. And this is what Christ has promised to us. There should be no doubt in our mind. And then he comes down to no one. There isn’t a single person, not even we ourselves, can remove us from our eternal security.
And the picture here is that Jesus is holding us in his hand, and then the Father is holding Christ’s hand inside of His. We’re completely secure there. We go on then to Ephesians, chapter 1, verses 13 through 14, and we find out it’s not just God the Father that’s involved in our perseverance, and it’s not just the Son. But we find that the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, is there keeping us in the faith. Ephesians 1, 13, 14, we read in him you also were sealed.
The hymn is the Holy Spirit with the promised Holy Spirit. When you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed the Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance until the redemption of the possession, to the praise of his glory, tells us when we come to true faith in Jesus Christ, that the Holy Spirit puts a seal upon us that cannot be removed. And he’s also handed to us as a down payment so that we can hold it up and say, this is the receipt. This is what I’m going to receive, this is what I am going to have that God has promised. And so the Father and the Son hold us, the Father guards us, and the Spirit seals us.
Therefore we know for certain that our salvation is going to last. And that word guard there, it can mean two things. It can mean that we’re guarded and that we’re protected from attack. But it also can be used to talk about a guard in a prison, that he is there guarding us so that we cannot escape. It comes from two angles.
We’re guarded, we’re kept from escaping, but we’re also guarded and we’re protected from anything from the outside that would try to remove us. This brings us to a question. Why does God allow the journey of his people to be so difficult? Why do we have pressures and problems and difficulties and temptations in this life? I’ve been reading a devotional by Alec Motier, an Isaiah that’s been just really eye opening last couple weeks.
And I want to share a passage that answers this question about why God allows the journey of his people to be difficult and just to set the stage. Isaiah is preaching to the people of God and he’s telling them, the Assyrians are coming and they’re going to take you off, you’ve been disobedient, you’re going to be punished. And then he’s telling them, but God is going to restore you and David’s throne is going to be restored. In the midst of all of this, he starts giving us this discourse like he’s telling farmers how they’re supposed to raise their crops. And we have to understand that he’s switching here to a proverb.
And a proverb is something like, what one in the hand is better than two in the bush. You know that. Now, does that mean we’re supposed to go out and catch birds? That’s not what it’s saying. There’s this explanation that applies to our life.
But here we have Isaiah, and all of a sudden he’s giving this proverb about farming. And let me read it to you first. Proverbs 28, 23, 29 says, Listen and hear my voice. Pay attention and hear what I say. Does the plowman plow every day to plant seed?
Does he continuously break up and cultivate the soil when he has leveled its surface? Does he not then scatter black cummin and sow cummin? He plants wheat in rows and barley in plots with spelt as their border. Certainly the black cummin is not threshed with a threshing board. And a cartwheel is not rolled over the cummin, but black cummin is beaten out with a stick and cumming with a rod.
Bread grain is crushed, but is not threshed endlessly. And though the wheel of the farmer’s cart rumbles, his horses do not crush it. So the soil is prepared in different ways for all these different seeds. We mainly have flour in our bread today, and we know what that tastes like. But they use these different grains.
Grains. And they made different types of bread that. That tasted different ways. And just as the bread that they made was different, they had to be cultivated in different ways. And it’s as if he’s telling the farmers here, well, this is how you plant cummin, and this is how you plant wheat.
And then he says, now this is how you separate the heads of grain from the grass and the plant that it’s growing on and how you crush it to make it flower. Some of them you have to use a threshing board, but you don’t put the coming on a threshing board. Some of them, you would use a stick to beat and separate things. Others would use a rod. Some types of grain, they would have a cart, and the horse or the mule would pull the cart, and it would walk in a circle over the grain to separate it.
And then there were even different ways that it was then crushed to make the right type of flourish, as if it’s all instruction on how to raise these crops. And Isaiah says that. How did the farmer know how to do this? In verse 26 it says, His God teaches him order, and he instructs him. And this also comes from the Lord of armies.
He gives wondrous advice. He gives great wisdom. The farmer knows what to do because God knows what to do and has instructed the farmer. So what is the meaning here? We have to see that God is the original farmer and each of these seeds are all the different individuals that are under his care.
So let’s go back and look at again. It says, does the plowman plow every day? Does he continuously break up and cultivate? There’s plowing, there’s breaking up, there’s cultivating. He’s making the surface level, he’s preparing the ground.
And that’s what God does in our lives. He knows exactly how to produce the soil where we can grow the best and produce the most fruit. He tells us then that things are planted differently. Does he not then scatter the black cummin? He scatters the cummin, but then the farmer sows the cummin.
But the wheat, he doesn’t scatter that. He plants it in rows. And then the barley isn’t planted in rows, it’s planted in plots. And then he tells us that the spelt is planted in a different place in the border along the way. We are the seeds.
Some of us are black cummins, some of us are wheat, some of us are barley, some of us are spelt. And God sows each of us differently according to his infinite wisdom. Some of us are scattered, some of us are sewn, some of us are planted in rows, some of us are planted in plots and some of us are planted along edges. But God knows where. We are each individually best suited to grow.
He knows how to prepare the soil best and he knows how best to plant you. And then once he does, we grow under his loving care and the grace of his sunshine, of his presence. And through his word we receive the water. And God causes us to grow until we produce the heads of grain. But something has to happen to all that grain before it can be made into flour.
It has to lose its life. The farmer comes along and he cuts that grain down. And that has to happen in our life too. After this growing process where God puts us where we belong and he feeds us and he nourishes us, there comes a point where he has to cut us down so that we can become what he wants us to be. And then after we’re cut down, then it isn’t easy for us.
Some of us get threshed on a board, some of us get beat with a stick, some of us get beat with a rod. Some of us have wheels of a cart that we’re driving over us to separate out what is necessary in order to produce bread. The Grains are cut to the ground. The grains are threshed, each according to what is best and each only as long as necessary. But the result is just as the farmer is making flour to produce bread that gives life, so God then uses our lives after he threshes us and we become flour so that he can make bread out of us, that we can share our life with others and become a sweet aroma for him in the baking process.
Abraham was the picture of ste staying power. Not his own power, but God’s preserving power in his life. He was a foreigner, he was living in tents, but he had the promise and he knew that God was going to carry through. So I want to end with just some, some questions of application today that you have to answer yourself. The first question is, have you obeyed the God by accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior and started your journey of faith to the life that he has called you to?
You begin that journey of obedience by saying, God, I know that I’m a sinner. There’s nothing I can do to take care of my sin problems. So I’m completely accepting that Jesus Christ died on the cross to take care of my sin problem and to give me salvation. I believe that I’m trusting that completely and I give my life to you today. And when I do that, I start on my journey of faith like Abraham did when he left Ur.
The next question is, is your journey of faith an example of staying as a foreigner and living in a tent or a temporary residence?
When Abraham came into the land, they knew that he was a foreigner. He didn’t build houses, he didn’t build a city, he lived in a tent and he moved as God led him. So the question here is, when you go to work, when you’re around people that you know, when you’re around your family, do they say, you know, that person’s odd. There’s something different about them. They should realize that you’re not like everybody else.
But that oddness is a wonderful thing. It’s saying you’re a believer in Jesus Christ and this is not your permanent home. You’re not living for here. You’re living for what lies ahead. The next thing, are you at peace as Jesus promised, Knowing that by God’s promise and knowing that by God’s will and knowing that by God’s power and you will inherit your eternal reward and live with him forever?
If you placed your faith in Jesus Christ, then you should know for certain that you have this peace inside of you despite whatever the difficulties are in your life next question. Are you relying on God to bring you through pressures, problems, difficulties and temptations?
The opposite of relying on God is what? It’s not relying on God, it’s relying on yourself. It’s relying on others. It’s relying on political parties and government and health systems to provide for all your needs. And those things are all good.
But ultimately you need to rely on God to bring you through the difficulties that he’s placed you in. And lastly, do you understand life through the lens that all you go through is God working in you to produce bread that you might be a source of life to others and sharing your faith through your example and through sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s why we go through all the things that we go through. That’s why Joe has been through things. May we pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are taking care of us according to exactly your plan. May we produce the fruit and the bread that you have for us that we might be a source of life to others. In Jesus name, amen.