Abraham's life exemplifies the obedience of faith, demonstrating that true faith is not about understanding but about trusting God's word even when it seems illogical. The sermon traces Abraham's journey through eight divine encounters, highlighting God's progressive revelation of His purpose, plan, and methods, which involved schooling, testing, and advancement for Abraham. Key lessons include the necessity of separating from the old life, embracing God's plan for inheritance, understanding His sifting and refining processes, and experiencing His patience and all-sufficiency. Ultimately, Abraham's willingness to offer Isaac reveals a profound trust in God's power to fulfill His promises, even through resurrection, showcasing faith as a response to God's spoken word.
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Hebrews chapter eleven verse eight. By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed, and he went out, not knowing where he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a foreign, a strange country, dwelling in tents 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. Through faith also, Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.
Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, as many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and of the sand which is by the seashore innumerable. These all died in faith. Now, this is a very noteworthy verse, and the one that immediately followed it. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from which they came out, they might have had opportunity to return.
But now they desire a better country, that is, than heavenly. Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city. By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, In Isaac shall I see be called, accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the death, from which also he received him in a figure. Now, if we had the time, if we had a night, it would really be much more profitable, and perhaps a great deal better in many, many ways, if we could take the first night as an orientation talk in the whole subject.
Well, unfortunately, we don't have that kind of time. So we'll have to be very brief, try to condense what we're trying to get at and try to get it into our minds bit by bit as we go along through the studies just what the aim of these talks might be. It is basically the life of faith, not so much the lives of the patriarchs, but the life of faith as illustrated by these patriarchs. Now these men are separated and singled out by God as witnesses to a certain fact or to a set of facts. They're called a cloud of witnesses in the beginning of chapter twelve.
We are compassed about what's so great, a cloud of witnesses. Now, the word witnesses there does not mean onlookers. It doesn't mean people who are up above and are looking down over the banishes to see how we're getting on down below. It's not witnesses in that sense. That's a different word. It's people who are called into court to give testimony. These men are now stepping forward and their names are being put forward as men who can witness to the rightness of the light of faith. They were men who did not waver, who did not go back, who did not fool around, who accepted God's word. And accepting God's word, they believed the things that God said, and the plan that he had became so real to them that the things they saw around about them, by comparison, became unreal.
In other words, the visible was a real thing. The invisible was a real thing in their life. What God told them was going to happen, no matter what men said could happen or couldn't happen. Many of these stands of these men must have appeared highly illogical, unreasonable, irrational, stupid to the men of their age. But that had nothing to do with our faith. No matter how ridiculous it may have looked, God spoke. These men accepted the word of God. Simply in faith, they gave God credit for knowing and resting on his word. They said nothing else mattered. Now we have that for us in those verses that we read that I drew your attention to in verse thirteen.
They received the promises. Not having received the promises, that is, not having actually received them physically, historically. But they saw them afar off. That is, they received them in their hearts. God gave promises, they received them. They accepted them. Did God say to Noah, it's going to rain and I'm going to wipe out the world. There was no proof that it could happen. As a matter of fact, I imagine all the scientific proof show that it couldn't happen. But God said it's going to happen. And this man, that word became so real to him that he was moved with fear. Not fear of people, but fear of coming judgment from now. And so he stepped out against the grain.
against the tide of history, against the society in which he lives, against all reasons. And he believes God. Now that's the life of faith. We are actually in our day asked to do the same thing. The world round about says, where's the promise of its coming? Do we believe it firmly enough that the unseen becomes more real to us than the thing? That's faith. And anything else is fake and phony, if not rubbish. People talk about faith and they mean a funny feeling running up and down their back. They talk about, well, I have faith in God and they mean if somebody can prove to them scientifically that it's right.
But these men didn't ask for that. Hath he said and shall he not do it? That was their cry. And knowing that God had spoken, that was the end of all disputes. So they saw them afar off, that is by faith. They were persuaded out of them. That is, these things became real and genuine to them. Now, you can be persuaded of a thing and yet not embrace it. But it says they saw them through the promise of God only. They were completely convinced that's what persuaded means, and they embraced them. There, at least that's for you. Hearing, conviction, and acceptance. And as they accepted what God showed them and stamped out on it, that demanded...
a sense, a position, a confession before the world. What's wrong with you, Jesus? What are you doing this for? Because God has said, well, but don't you want to, you know, have a little bit of real estate around here? No, no, not in this country. Because God is going to package the whole thing up. God is going to judge it. We don't want any part in it. That included places like Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot made the mistake of exchanging the invisible for the visible. And he lost. because the whole thing was burned up and sank beneath the waves of the southern end of the Dead Sea. So these men accepted what God promised, stepped out on it, and it became real to them.
Absolutely real. And with this deep conviction, having embraced it, they had a confession to make. What was that confession? The confession is, we are strangers and pilgrims on the earth. about the only time you hear now, strangers and children, outside some old-fashioned folk or other, the only time you hear this these days is in mockery, or as some kind of witticism, taking a poke at the Lord's people. I was at a conference once, not in this country, so don't try to figure out where it was, and it was a great enormous field just full of the most magnificent cars you've ever seen I won't even tell you the mix because then you might know how the country runs and somebody jokingly said as he passed put his hand on one of his gleaming affairs and said happy people though despised and poor now this is how people make fun of this kind of thing but you know these are scripture truths to be a pilgrim is a real thing Not to belong to this world is a real thing.
And so real is it that God says not only are you not to belong to it, well as a matter of fact he says you don't belong to it, but act as though you didn't belong to it and don't you dare to conform to its way. Now if you don't believe God's word, that is if you don't believe it was deep conviction and if you haven't embraced it as an integral part of your life, it's not going to be like that. You may give it up because it's a thing to do for a Christian. That is a certain percentage of it. Maybe ten percent. But you're not going to confess to the world. I just don't have any partner. It's not for me. My Lord was murdered here. This whole business is going to be wound up in smoke and flame.
God is going to destroy the whole life. And so we step out of it with conviction that this is so. Now this is the angle we're going to take through these talks. The Hebrew Christians of course, had accepted, they had given up an age-old religion, a God-given religion, the temple, the priesthood and so on, which is material, it is physical, it is visible, and it was ordained by God in its own time. They had given it up, and they had accepted a place with spies and treated with contempt, following in the footsteps of a crucified master, one who was repugnant to the Jewish nation. It a stumbling block and an offense, something that was absolutely repellent to them, hanged on a tree.
That was all you needed to say. Now they had gone through all this. We're told in the later chapters of Hebrews that they had actually suffered the spoiling of their good, and had suffered it cheerfully. But then there came a time when they became confused and uncertain. Maybe there was a barrage of propaganda aimed at them. Maybe the persecution became so vicious. So very, very harsh that they began to wonder. And maybe there were people there saying all the time, well, you don't need to be like this at all. After all, the ancients were God's people. And they enjoyed the tabernacle and the temple and the vestments of the priest and the blessings of the land. They enjoyed exemption from sickness because they were God's people.
Look at you. God said he would deliver them from the sword and the lions and the fire and all the rest of it. And look what's happening to you. You're not being delivered. And so they became confused and uncertain in their grasp of these things. Now, the letter to the Hebrews was written to these people to tell them to take a good, hard look at the whole thing again, and to consider what the life of faith was all about. And then, having gone over it through the first ten chapters, at the end of the tenth chapter, he speaks of the danger of them going back. and losing a very great deal in going back, wavering, swinging out of the past. And then finally he swings into this famous faith.
And he cites a group of people. Now he doesn't give the names of them all, but of the names he does give. They're divided in two groups right at the Exodus. That is the pre-Exodus and the post-Exodus groups in the chapter. And there are seven men in the first group and one woman. And seven men and one woman in the second group, divided right at Moses. Because, of course, that's when Israel became a nation. And she marched out and entered into covenant relationship with God. So just to help you get hold of it, this is the way the chapter seems to be divided up. Now you can work out the plan of her for a bit. We're just selecting a few of these men, and Abraham is the first, to illustrate different aspects of the life of faith.
It seems to me, at least, that these men who are actually cited here as witnesses to the testimony bearers, to the facts of this life of faith, are selected specifically for a purpose. And there seems to be a key word, or at least a key thought, connected with each one of them. In Abram's case, for example, or Abraham, we better call him all the way through. His name is, first of all, Abram, then changed Abraham. It says, Abraham, by faith, Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive. Not now, but later on he should receive for an inheritance, obey. Now from that we've chosen the title for the talk of tonight, Abraham the obedience of faith.
The obedience of faith. So when we come to Isaac, for example, it seems that the characteristic of his life was more patient. He was a patient, prodding man. Patience characterizes every turn of Isaac's life, even before he was born. His parents waited for twenty years for him. How would you like that? And then, oddly enough, he waited twenty years for his firstborn child. And so here were men who, given the promise of God, didn't mind how long God asked them. Now, this is ideal. Abraham wobbled a bit, you remember, and Sarah gave him a push and the devil gave him a push.
Maybe he gave him the push through Sarah. I don't really know, possibly anyway. But there were moments of doubt and hesitation. But the tenor of his life was, has God spoken? Then I can wait. I'm not going to inherit the land. God showed him. God spelled it out in terms of years. He said at one stage, you are going to go to your fathers in a good old age. And your offspring are going to go down into another land. And they're going to be there four generations. And at the end of four hundred years, that is from the time that God is speaking to him. And going to bring your people out and bring you up into the land.
So Abraham is going to take a long time. There wasn't a quibble out of Abraham. He just said, all right. Four days. Or four weeks. Or four months. Or four years. Or four generations. Or four hundred years. God is not slack concerning his promise. I can wait. But all the way through his life, it seems to be obedience to what God was saying. In Isaac's life, while he was obedient to, and while Abraham was patient, nonetheless, the outstanding characteristic of the study of Isaac seems to be patience. He dug well. The fellow signs laughter. He redug them. They blocked them again. He dug them all over again. They blocked those.
He went and dug new wells, and they blocked those, and he started and redug them. This is the man. When we come to some of the other men, for example, Jacob, the outstanding characteristic, and his life is difficult. A rough gem, an ugly customer, poor material. But when God had finished with it, what a glorious man he was. But his life was made up of a series of disciplineings under the hand of God. Now, so much just to project you into the slant we're going to take on the studies. Now, I'll leave you to just to look up and to think about the scriptures down at the bottom of page one of your notes.
If you notice the introductory paragraph says, before starting the study, we should check the New Testament for authority to use these Old Testament histories for present day instruction. Some say that such interpretation or even application is strange and fanciful, if not completely unjustified. Let us note the following scripture references. Now, I'm afraid we don't have time to go into them all. We're already running behind the clock, as far as I can see. But I'm sure you will be able to look down them. Let me just draw your attention to perhaps the approach to this thing. In First Corinthians ten, verse eleven, Israel's Old Testament experiences are said to have happened for object lessons.
That's a startling word. They really happened to them to teach other people something in sign language, in types and object lessons. And not only did they happen for that purpose, but they were written specifically for our learning. Why did God bother to write down about their stumblings at Baal Pier when Baalim, for example, led them into that mess of idol worship and so on? Why did God write that down just to humiliate them? No, says the Holy Spirit, for your learning and yours and yours and mine. That's why. That's specifically stated. They were written for our learning. That is the thing that happened to Israel.
In Romans fifteen four, all things written in earlier times were written for our learning. In Galatians three sixteen, these very things were used by the Holy Spirit in teaching divine truth not just to Jewish Christians but to Gentile converts. Men who were not Jews at all. And yet, the story of Abraham, the story of Rahab, the story of Sarah and her conception of a child, the story of Hagar and Ishmael, they are brought in. And says the Holy Spirit, Sarah speaks of this. And Hagar speaks of that. And Ishmael speaks of that other.
And so the Holy Spirit is taking up these happenings. and specifically applying them to New Testament situations. First Corinthians nine, nine, the Apostle Paul said, now God said oxen were not to be muzzled when they were treading out the grain. That is, threshing. They simply spread the oats and the ground, and the oxen with a special kind of wooden pads on their feet, like shoes, clogs. Probably they were past ones, you see. Went around walking on the grain, and in walking on them, on the grain actually broke away and shook out and separated the grain from the from the chaff now God said don't you ever muzzle an ox while it's doing that if it's working in the grain it ought to have the opportunity of putting some of it in its stomach and then says the Holy Spirit through Paul do you think God said that just for the sake of oxen or did he say it for our sake that we should learn something from it And then he goes on to teach them a lesson about the support of those who are ministering to them in spiritual things, but he draws it from an obscure scripture about oxen not being muscled from their flesh and grain.
And he said, Did God write it just for oxen's sake, or did he write it for our sake? Now listen, yea, verily, for our sake he wrote it. And that's a much more obscure thing than some of the things we're looking at. And so on, right then through. Psalm one oh two verse eighteen actually says that these things written are for a generation to come and so the Old Testament is actually full of instruction about these things and of course Hebrews chapter eleven itself is a proof is it not because he is citing these men as a very clear evidence of things that we should know and of of truths that should be worked out in our lives now on your second page in Hebrews eleven verses eight to ten We should note the active verbs of the story.
That is the active verbs of the story of Abraham. You could underline them if you don't mind underlining your Bible. But if you do, well then you ought to be able to underline them in your mind. Or write them down in the margin of your paper if you might not know how to underline a thing in your mind. Note the word obeyed, went out, sojourned. That is, he stayed there on a temporary basis. dwelt in tents, looked for a city, confessed that he was a stranger, offered up Isaac, received. You notice how very strong these are. They are positive, active types of verbs.
And, of course, they speak of this life of obedience, as we'll see as we go down. But also in verse eight, that he did not know where he was going. He trusted. Faith does not involve knowing or understanding all about what we are asked to do by God. Obedience in the Bible does not hinge on rationalization. Now, I just throw that in because today we are being constantly told you can't expect anybody to believe something that they don't understand. Now, that's questionable, even as an ordinary statement of fact.
There are so many things that I believe that I don't understand. I can believe a good deal about the way my mind acts when it does, but I don't understand a thing about how it acts real. Nor do the greatest scientists or brain specialists, neurologists or anybody else. That brain is a mystery, but I believe it's there. And I believe that it functions in certain ways and I accept things that are said about it. So I, in many, many ways, believe lots of things that I don't understand. I believe that if I dial a number on a telephone, I'll get the connection.
I don't understand really how that works. And I don't think you do either. If you were behind the panels in a bail exchange, you would know even less about it because it becomes more and more mysterious. But we accept these things. But when it comes to the scriptures, It's perfectly obvious that it isn't quite even like that. Because some of the things that God puts before us for acceptance by faith are actually contradictory. Contradictory to science as it is believed and accepted in our day. The Bible says that the Lord Jesus Christ was born of a virgin without the action of a father.
scientifically that is nonsense and could never happen God assures me that it did happen by a miraculous divine intervention and I believe it no matter what science says God tells me that God the word became flesh and dwells among us now I can no more understand how God the eternal spirit could become a man then I could understand how to fly just as I am here now. It's absolutely irrational. Spirit can never become physical material.
Try to think of it just for a minute. But it happened. And his name was called Emmanuel. God with us. The word, the eternal word, became flesh. I don't know how it happened. I do not know how a sinful person's sins are transferred to the head of his sinless, spotless substitute. I do not understand anything of the mysteries of new birth, that is, as to how actually it takes place. But I believe it with all my heart, even though it may be totally contradictory to everything man accepts as his standard of thinking today.
Now, this is what this is all about. It's not understanding. Note also we're going to follow the life of this man in eight steps, that is in a framework of eight great happenings in his life. And every one of these happenings involves an appearance of God to him or God speaking to him. So we call them eight interviews with God. And at every one of these interviews, God revealed something farther of his plan. Bit by bit, in eight steps, they seem to go on progressively. Every one of these, no, I have no doubt that there may have been many more than eight, but eight at least are recorded for us.
That might even stir you up to try to prove that there are nine instead of eight. Or maybe you might want to prove that there are only seven. That would be all right with me, too. Just as long as it makes you read and dig into the thing. But I think I have found eight of these world-shaking things, world-shaking events. When God came down and spoke to this man, and he spoke to him in such a way that his heart was strengthened, his faith became more and more vital to him and to God. And he actually walked with God, as Enoch did. He went through the land worshiping God, Abraham the Hebrew. Now, as you'll notice in the middle of that second page, look at the paragraph that's above.
From Genesis twelve to Genesis twenty-four, we have the life of Abraham outlined in a framework of a series of interviews with God. Each one, a revelation of God, and a challenge to some kind of active response on Abraham's part. These interviews or revelations given us are eight in number that may first but may first be seen to involve, A, schooling, since each was a revelation of God and his purpose. That is Abraham was learning. He learned one fact when God asked him to leave or in the Calvary. He learned another one when he was at Karen. He learned another one when he came down to Shechem.
In other words, every time God appeared to him, he learned something. He was going through school. God was teaching him a little bit higher truth. B, It involves testing since such revelations demand a reaction, a response from us. God said, listen, Abraham, I'm going to give you a child, a baby. Abraham had to react to that. He either had to say, nonsense, you're forgetting my age. You're forgetting my wife's age. But he didn't. He didn't. Every one of them, every... bit of instruction, every revelation he got from God, challenged him. If he rose to it, it was like going into the next grade, getting steeper and steeper all the time.
And C, they involve advance. That is development, forward movement in his life. There's nothing stagnant about this business, this life of faith. Day by day, each new thing we discover in the Bible is a challenge to us to practice it. If we do, we move forward. If we don't, we move back. It's as simple as that. You can't stand still. You can't tread water. You can't circle the field. You can't fool around. This is perfectly clear from Scripture. So, schooling in Revelation, testing in what we do with the Revelation, and advance if we accept the Revelation and go forward on it.
We're developing, becoming more obedient, becoming stronger, more mature, more advanced, more able, more competent, closer to God every day as we move forward. Now let's look at the eight interviews as quickly as we can. First of all, in chapter twelve. Now we've got to go to Genesis, of course. Genesis chapter twelve. Okay. And see if we can find any kind of pattern in these, in these appearances of God through Abraham, these great happenings in his life, these great crises in his life.
Genesis chapter twelve, verse one. Now God had said unto Abraham, Get thee out of thy country. It doesn't say, and God said, God had said. So that had said is going back behind something which happens in between. Now what happened in between, we see in verse thirty-one of chapter eleven, Tira took Abram his son and Lot, the son of Haran, and his son's son, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, the son Abram's wife, and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, and they came to Haran and dwelt there.
In other words, they left Ur to go to Canaan, but they didn't make it. They stopped. I don't know whether you've ever looked at a map or not, but it would be worth a while. I'm hoping, as the time goes on, to get hold of an overhead projector and have some charts and maps that might help you to grasp some of these things. But if you think back... into some of the maps in your Bible. You'll notice that Abram came away from the southeast, in Ur of the Chaldees, in the far side of the Euphrates River. That Euphrates River rose a way up in the northwest. And he was told to go almost due west, a little bit north of west, to the land of Canaan.
But he followed the river. Now, it may have been the best way to go. I don't know. I'm not criticizing... Abram for the way he went on a journey. I'm not nearly near enough. But he went from Ur of the counties north-northwest right up through to Antira, dive in Aaron. Now God had said to Abraham. You see, people sometimes say, well, if it weren't for what Stephen says in the book of the Acts, you remember Stephen said the God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham. while he was still in Ur of the Chaldees and said, do so and so and so. If it weren't for Stephen, we wouldn't know about this. That's not strictly true.
We do know about it. God did speak to Abraham in Ur, terror somehow, or other stole the ball from him, and said, now, look, I'm your father, and let's handle this thing in the family. And instead of this being tidied up back in Ur, Tira went along and Lot went along and a lot of other people went along and instead of coming across into Canaan and way up to Karen and stopped there and I don't know exactly at the moment anyway how many years they stayed there but they stayed there until the old man Tira died and I don't call him the old man disrespectfully he was a very old man and I think he's a picture also of the old man in us fighting against the purposes of God and until he was buried they stayed at least not any more than half way to the mountain of Canaan but God had said while he was still back there in Urba Calviz get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred from thy father's house up to a land that I will show thee and I will make of thee a great nation and I will bless thee and make thy name great and thou shalt be a blessing and
I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that curses thee and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed so Abram departed as the Lord had spoken unto him that is he departed out of Haran we read at the end of verse four now he never should have stopped there God didn't send him to Haran God sent him, quite obviously, to go to Canaan, because it says that, even in chapter eleven, verse thirty-three of ten, to go into the land of Canaan. And they came unto Haran and dwelt there. That's why I suggest that you look at the map. Haran wasn't anywhere near Canaan. It wasn't even in the right direction.
But that's where it went. Now the first interview, therefore, is one that is looked back to in retrospect in chapter twelve, verse one. And there God revealed something to Abraham, and he revealed that he had a purpose for him. What is the purpose? God says very specifically what the purpose was. He says, I will make thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing, and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. If those sentences or phrases mean anything, They mean one thing and one thing only to me. As far as that interview goes, Abraham, I am calling you to leave this place because I have things to do through you that I cannot do through you here in our mentality.
Get out. I want you all to myself. Now, he doesn't yet mention the country. He doesn't yet. speak of the air he just said I'm going to make you a great nation he didn't say how he only revealed part of the great revelation to him but it was step number one and here I have suggested that you think of it as the purpose of God to make him a blessing I know that we know now looking back on my faith that when God said in me shall all the families of the earth be blessed God meant that all the families of the earth would be blessed through Messiah, who came directly of the seat of Abraham.
I know that, and you know it. But I am also quite sure that God intended, even in between and entirely apart from Messiah, to make Abraham the man positively a blessing to us. And I think that's what God wants to do with you. This is where your life and Abraham's life now begins to run parallel. God called Abraham out of our localities to make him a blessing. God has called you out of the world to make you a blessing. He wants to do things through you in his purpose that he cannot do in your old state and condition. So he had to take you out of the world by the blood of his son.
He had to buy you out from the bondage of Satan. He had to bring his Holy Spirit to work on your heart. to show you the doom and judgment that lay ahead in the place where you were, and to ask you to plead to the Lord Jesus Christ. And in doing so, he was not just saving you from hell, he was showing you in his purpose that he wanted you as an instrument for blessing. And Abram, this is what God had declared. He said, all right. All right. I'll go. things intervened you went away up to Haran you had to start and retrace the steps not retrace the steps back to birth but come all the way down again from Haran back to the land of Canaan down to Shechem the first stopping place apparently sometimes you know at the beginning we don't clearly obey everything that God gives us to obey through those first years of our Christian experience very often are wobbly you don't always get the point We waste a lot of time, we fool around, sometimes years of our lives are blasphemous and are not used
for the purposes for which God commands. Isn't it wonderful that God is such patience and graceful? He could have said to Abram, all right, I chose you when you were X number of years down in Erdogan County, I told you to go to Canaan, you didn't do it. So what? So why am I going to fool around with you anymore? stay in Karen and I'll take somebody else. He said, he said, Abramson. Abramson, get out of Karen. I didn't call you here in the first place. Move, man. Go to where I ask you to go. God mercifully gave him another chance to reorient his life. Maybe God will give him a much chance to reorient our lives.
He's not an easy thing to give him. God is very gracious. He did so to Peter. He did so to David. He did so to Jones. He did so to many and other in scriptures. As a matter of fact, almost all of it. This is the very character you've got. And in Abraham's case, he said not. Go where I told you to go in the first place. So, the first interview was in earth. And it was regarding the purpose of God. And you'll notice the subtitle, The End of the Old Life. No halfway house business. No business of saying, well, I'll move out into the suburbs of earth.
You could make me a wonderful blessing to the Babylonians, surely they. Who am I going to bless over there in that place of deserts in Israel? Who ever heard of Canaan? It's full of pagans anyway. The Babylonians, you see, were the civilized people. The Canaanites were a bunch of savages, burning their own children in the fire, which was the case of God, Moloch. other things like this. And so he could have said, look, why couldn't I be a blessing here? But no, God was going to teach us something through it and he said, there is only one place that I can bless you and that is the place of my purpose for you. Get out, get moving and get in. Now he blundered the first time. Then God said, all right, I'm going to tell you the next time.
And the way Abraham started, now go on in chapter twelve, verse four. So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy and five years old, when he departed out of Haran. And Abram took Sarai, his wife, and Lot's brother's wife, and all their substances they had gathered, and so on. Verse six, the end of verse five, says, And into the land of Canaan they came, proving that they hadn't gone there in the first place. And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem. unto the oak of Moray, and the Canaanite was then in the land, and the Lord appeared unto Abram.
That's appearance number two. The Lord appeared unto Abram and saith. Now notice he goes farther this time. Unto thy seed will I give this land. And there builded he, Abram, an altar unto the Lord who appeared unto him. And he removed from there unto a mountain on the east of Bethel. pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west and Hayai on the east. And there he built an altar under the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed going on still toward the Negev, the south. It's generally accepted now that that word, which is translated in the King James Version, the south is the proper name, name of a country, the Southland, the Negev that you hear about in the news from Palestine these days.
So he's coming from Haran, way up in the north, and he's coming farther and farther south, farther and farther south, Shekin and Bethel, and now further on down into the Negev. Now, let's note what God said to him here. You'll note in your notes there that this interview is regarding the plan of God. The first it was just a purpose. He's going to make him a blessing. Now it's the plan of God. He says, I am going to give you this land. And there he built an altar. These altars were for offering something to God, but they were also memorial altars.
I think we have to keep this in our mind. Some people say Abram was characterized by two things. He was characterized by a tent, which meant he was a pilgrim, because God had not given him personally the land yet. and he was characterized by an altar that is sacrifice. He was also characterized by a number of other things, among them interviews with God, revelations from God. He was characterized by worship everywhere he went. He was known as a man who worshiped God, who put God in the place of supreme worth. He was also a man of a different kind of an altar, but we'll see these things as we go on.
Here is this man now told about the plan of God that is inheriting the land. Now God has revealed to us his purpose. That purpose is to make us a blessing. Has God promised to give us something in exchange? Oh, yes. Not only all the blessings in heavenly places, but actually, you know, we are told in Scripture that if we are faithful in our service to God done here, When he sets up his kingdom, we are going to have a share in ruling it with him. I think that's a staggering thought. Pilgrims and strangers now, ruling and reigning with Christ then, how long to wait.
Now the world sneers and says, pie in the sky, the opiate, of the multitudes. Give them a bit of religion and help them to forget the misery that the capitalists are foisting on them. God doesn't say that. He says, you will suffer here because you're strangers. You don't belong here. I have taken you out of the world and given you as a present to my son. John chapter seventeen. The man whom thou hast given me out of the world. One of the most startling statements of the Holy Bible. I am a present from God to his son. taken out of the world and given to him for his purposes. Now, the land, that's the plan of God, inheriting it.
Of course, I'm called, and you are called to grin and inherit the blessings that God has given us too. Now, look at chapter thirteen. Verse fourteen. This is immediately after that sad, sad break between Abraham and Lotch. Lot wasn't satisfied with the pilgrim pathway. He wanted something better. He wanted something at least more, you know, more satisfying under the present circumstances. And so he took himself off to the well-watered plain. He came to the cities of the plain and pitched his tent towards Sodom.
The men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly. And the Lord said unto Abraham, After Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward, and eastward and westward, for all the land which thou seeest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever. And I will make thy seed as a dust of the earth, so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land and the length of it, and in the breadth of it, For I will give it unto thee. Then Abram removed his tent and came and dwelt by the oath of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the Lord.
You see, he's moving forward. He's growing. He's getting hold of things. This is interview number three. And it's about this separation. There's one thing you will prove, young Christian, as you go on your life for God, that if you are going to accept the word, and the promises of God and act upon them, if you are going to take Christian living seriously, put it to the test and put it into practice, you are not going to have the gang along with you. This man becomes more and more lonely as a pastoral seeker.
Just you notice, that's not my imagination either. He starts out with a whole family gathering, including Tira and Lot and wives and servants and the whole thing. And then he left some of them behind up at Karen. You didn't remember that, did you? But you will remember that when Abraham was looking for a wife for his son Isaac, many, many, many years later, where did he send them to? He sent him to Karen. or Karen, as it then called, and he sent them back to his family that had stayed up there. So not only did they bury Tira and leave him in the grave, but they left quite a section of the family, Laban and a whole bunch of them up there.
You see, the path is getting narrower, getting a little bit lonelier now. But he still has, he might say, thank God, I still have lost. And then there came a day when he said, lost. God has called me to one path and I'm not too sure about you and we're quarreling about it. You choose what you want to do. And he said, all right, uncle, I think if you don't mind, I'll choose this lovely valley. It just looks like the land of Egypt that I saw that time you took me down into it. And I'm going to take that and he took it. And Abram now is a very, very lonely man. This quite possibly was the last living relative of any importance anyway. that he had with him and now the path forks off again.
You see it's the story of the story of Orpah and Ruth. The path divides and divides and divides and divides. You will have to say goodbye to many a cherished friend. Sometimes you won't even need or be bothered to say goodbye. Your paths will just swing apart. My old companions fare you well. I will not go with you to hell. I mean with Jesus Christ to dwell, I will go. That is the song of a gospel hymn. And you left many of them to accept Christ, but you found many. But then there's a gang, you know, the crowd, the kids. Watch it, young people.
Watch it. God's path is not walked in gangs. And God's revelations are not to gangs. God's teaching is in the inmost recesses of my own being and personality alone with God. And there will be times when I will be forced to say, I simply must go on with God. And perhaps it will cost a good deal. The path is getting lonely and maybe Abraham was a bit cast down about it. And so God spoke to him for the third time and he said, Abram, don't you worry. Have you seen this fellow take the very best section of the land?
But it's all yours. Every bit of it. You're not losing a thing. It's only a temporary thing. He doesn't even have a nine hundred and ninety-nine year lease on it or a ninety-nine year lease on it. It's yours. I gave it to you and to your seed. And Lot is not your seed. But Lord, I don't even have any. Never mind. That will come. He says, I'm going to give you a posterity of numerous of the plans. Now, later on at another interview, he's going to say, I'm also going to give you a posterity as numerous as the stars. You see, Abraham has a literal physical family, the Jewish people.
He also has a spiritual family, the children of faith, you and I, who are children of Abraham. We are children of the faith of Abraham. And so he has a physical earthly posterity. the Israeli nation. He has also a spiritual posterity. The Christian who accept the word of God, the one is a sand of the sea, and the other is a star to the sky, a spiritual people. God is now showing him his method. That's the method of God. And what's the method? Separating, separating, separating. You see, it's the work of the Siv, the Sifter.
If you don't know the word Siv, I don't know. I get messed up in these words. Like what you see in the gravel pits, that drum rotating, and the big stones come out, and then the next ones come out. This is a sifting process. This is what happens in the kitchen when the flowers sifted and resifted, and you may end up with only half as much, but you've got much better flowers. This is a task of the retort, of the Bunsen burner, of the task two. This is a task of the fire. Glass and glass comes out all the time, but it's a refining process. Now, I'm afraid the time has gone. We must simply just refer you to the others and let you look them up.
You'll remember that Abraham had a battle. It's chapter fifteen one, but don't turn to it. We just don't have the time. In chapter fifteen and one, after that battle with the kings, God came down and he said to Abraham, You know, I can look after you. I'm all around you. I want you to wait for this son. I want you to wait for this son. I can hold you up. Don't be afraid. Walk before me. Be thou cursed. And then in Seventeen and One, after the business of Hagar, when he had to drive out Hagar and Ishmael, and God again appeared to him, and he said, I am Almighty God.
clearly is God all sufficient. I can be everything that you need. Then at the destruction of Sodom, God appeared, Sodom and Gomorrah, God appeared to him again in chapter eighteen, and he revealed something else to him there. What is it? It's a judgment of God on the world. A question of relationships. You'll have to leave it with me. You'll have to get out of it. I'm going to judge the whole thing. And then in chapter twenty-one, verse twelve, after the business of Ishmael, the election of God, not of the flesh.
You can't have this man, this one. And then in the matter of sacrificing Isaac, he's leading him into fellowship with the greatest of all secrets, the sacrifice of an only begotten son. Could he get any closer to God than this? It's a long, long way from Earl of the Calvary to the altar on which Isaac is tied. And as he's there, he has gone up and up and up through all the graves of the school. He has learned a lot from God. And as he has learned from God, he has gone forward.
He has accepted the pastings. He has obeyed the word of God. He has let Lot go. He has let Ishmael go. Let Hagar go. He has let the men of the land take everything and anything almost that they wanted. He has depended on God in that matter. Of the patience, that's the place where God, you remember, tells him that it's going to be four hundred years, four generations. It's not going to be fulfilled right away. You're going to have to wait for it. And that's bringing them into the secret of his patience. So, glancing down your list, interview number one in Ur of the Chaldees was regarding the purpose of God, the end of the old life.
Interview number two in Canaan, the plan of God, inheriting the land. Interview number three, after Lot, the method of God, sifting and separation. Interview number four, after the battle, the patience of God, waiting for what God was going to give him and do for him. After the Hager episode, the all-sufficiency of God, you can afford to let everything go. I will give you everything you need. I am God all-sufficient. Sodom and Gomorrah. That's regarding the judgment of God and his relationships with a world under judgment.
Ishmael brings in the question of the election of God. None of this is according to the flesh. And in the sacrifice of Isaac, he's bringing him into the secret of the sacrifice of God. Giving up not only the most cherished thing in his whole life, but the channel... for the fulfillment of all that God has said. Don't get your eye on the channel, God says. Offer up your son. But, Lord, if I do this, then there won't be any channel for all these things to happen. Now, Abraham didn't say this.
We learned from Hebrews that he believed that God could raise him from the dead. He didn't think God was going to hold him back and kill him. He apparently believed that God was going to let him kill him in an act of supreme devotion to God. And then God would raise him up from the dead. Now, how many people have been raised from the dead, previous to this, that you read of in the Bible? Nobody that I know of. But his faith jumped over this whole massive mountain ridge of human thinking, he said. If God needs that boy, and if God wants him killed, he can be killed, and God will raise him from the dead.
And God said, that's enough. That's all I want. That's as far as I want.