Abraham: Fact-Checking Your Future - Part B

By the time Abraham gets to be 99 years of age, still no kid, God changes his name. From exalted father Avram to Avraham, which is father of a multitude. And I can see Abraham going, please no Lord, don't make me wear that name. But remember, Abraham believed God, and there's no indication that he balked at that. The Bible tells us that God has put eternity in our hearts, and Abraham was no different.

He looked ahead to a heavenly country. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip shares how you can experience more of God's power in your life when you live for eternity. But before we begin, here's a great resource that will help take your prayer life to a new level. Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China, said it is possible to move men through God by prayer alone. Ian Bounds, who authored nine books on prayer, said God shapes the world by prayer. The more praying there is in the world, the better the world will be. And Billy Graham said to get nations back on their feet, we must first get down on our knees.

Here's Skip Heitzig. You know, the Bible says that we will experience God's peace when we pray, and it tells us to pray about everything. We want to help you know how and what to pray and what to expect. That's why we're offering Lord Teach Me to Pray in 28 Days by Kay Arthur. When you give to support this ministry, prayer is meant to up the game of peace and joy in our hearts. Lord Teach Me to Pray is our thanks when you give $25 or more today to help keep this ministry on the air, connecting you and others to God's Word.

Call 800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Okay, we're in Hebrews chapter 11 today as we get into the teaching with Skip Heitzig. We meet Mrs. Abraham, we meet Sarah, verse 11, by faith. Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed. And she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful, who had promised. Therefore, from one man, and him as good as dead, were born as many as the stars of the sky in multitude, innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore. Abraham and Sarah had, I suppose, a normal life, maybe a three bedroom tent, two camel garage, right?

They had each other, but they had no child. And even though God said, I'm going to make a nation out of you, I'm going to bless you, and you all the nations of the earth will be blessed, great. But time passed, and he's not getting any younger, in fact he's getting quite a bit older. And one night, God says to him, I am your shield, and your exceeding great reward. And this is wonderful, but you can just almost feel Abraham's resistance, because he's been patient and waiting so long. He says, what will you give me, seeing that I am childless? And I have this guy named Eleazar, who's my heir, this dude from Damascus, but he's not like mine.

What are you going to give me? So, when he says that, God says, Abe, step outside, let's do some stargazing together, check those stars out. Can you count them? I'm going to make your offspring more in number than the stars that you can count in the sky. And it says, after God told him that, another promise, says Abraham believed God, and God accounted it to him as righteousness, just going, okay, I believe it, amen, sure, whatever.

He just made a statement of faith, and God said, okay, that's enough for me to account you as righteous. Now, in that conversation, Abraham is now 86 years old, from 75, 11 years pass, and he says, look at the stars, I'm going to make your descendants like the stars of heaven. So, it has been 11 years since Abe gets the first promise that his wife, Sarah, is going to have a child. So, you know, month after month, year after year, after year after year, same question, are you pregnant yet?

Nope, I can't get pregnant, and I'm a really old person, so the odds are not in my favor. Now, you know that Abraham is a name that means exalted father. That's what his name means, exalted father, which is an embarrassing name for a guy who can't have a kid. So, the caravans come by and they go, hey, how are you doing? He goes, great, and the caravan leader says, what's your name? He goes, exalted father. And so, the caravan leader would say, oh, great, well, how many do you have?

How many children do you have? He goes, well, I don't have any. You know, he sees it as he's a laughing stock. By the time Abraham gets to be 99 years of age, still no kid, God changes his name. From exalted father, Avram, to Avraham, which is father of a multitude. And I can see Abraham going, please, no, Lord, don't make me wear that name. But remember, Abraham believed God, and there's no indication that he balked at that.

So, he took the name father of a multitude, because he believed God. Okay, now, here we have Sarah's faith in what we just read, highlighted in Hebrews 11. When we read, however, the text back in Genesis, it seems to read a little bit differently. We're not, like, struck by her faith, right? Because in chapter 17 of Genesis, she basically says, Abe, look, I'm old, you're old, this ain't gonna work.

I have a handmaid named Hagar. I think what God meant by that promise, we can't really, like, take the Bible literally. So, I think what God really meant is that you can just go in and have relations with Hagar, and they'll have a baby, and that baby will be, let's call that the promise of God. Okay, it's a spiritualized promise. So, there's not an indication of faith. Ishmael is born, and there's a lot of lessons that could be learned with Ishmael. We think we may know what's best and kind of order God to do it our way.

We don't really know the full scoop, so don't ever do that. I love the story about a girl who went to a computer dating service, and she knew exactly what she wanted in a suitor and a husband, and she was very specific on the computer. She wanted somebody who was short because she herself was a wee little ass. So, she said, I want somebody who is short, somebody who prefers formal wear, and somebody who loves water sports. So, the computer sent her a penguin.

Short, formal attire, loves water sports, okay. Here's the point. Even when we order up a penguin in life, an Ishmael, God is still faithful. So, they go ahead and have a child named Ishmael.

Chapter 18 of Genesis, God comes to Abraham again and says, Sarah's going to have a baby. And Abraham goes, oh, Lord, this is getting so old. Let Ishmael live before you. Oh, that Ishmael might live before you. Just fulfill your promise through him. You know, we went through this rigmarole to have him.

He's here, use him. And God says, nope, I'll bless Ishmael, I'll make him a great nation, but your wife Sarah is going to have a natural born child. Now, when Sarah heard that promise, because it says the Lord and these angels appeared at the tent and they're eating a meal and make this promise, it says that Sarah laughed within herself. So, she just kind of went, mm-hmm, that's funny, because there ain't no way I'm having a baby. And then the Lord said, hey, Abraham, why did Sarah laugh? And she goes, I didn't laugh. The Lord says, yeah, you did. I heard it.

I know it. So, she laughed. That was not a laughter of faith. It was not a laughter of joy. It was a laughter of I don't believe it.

Yet, it remarks here about her faith. Yet, before the year ended, she was pregnant, delivered a child, and named the child Laughter. Isaac means laughter. And she said, the Lord's made us laugh. Now, this second laughter, different than the first laughter, the first laughter was a laughter of unbelief.

The second was just a laughter of sheer joy. God did it. God did it. God turned a retirement home into a maternity ward. And it's just so weird, all they could do is laugh with joy.

Here's what I love. Hebrews 11 doesn't mention her unbelief, doesn't mention her laugh of mockery, mentions only her faith, which must have been right at the end as she grew in her pregnancy and delivered her child. So, Hebrews 11 makes no mention of her initial doubt, only her eventual faith.

Why? Well, there's a principle in 1 Corinthians 13, love keeps no record of wrongs. Here is God not even acknowledging the bad part of her testimony and just includes the good part because he is the God of second chances. Now, through all of this 25 years, Abraham was patient. Verse 12, notice it again, Therefore from one man and him as good as dead, he's 100 years old, were born as many as the stars in the sky in multitude innumerable as the sand which is on the seashore.

Reproductively his body was dead, physiologically Sarah was barren, but Abraham is not thinking of human frailty but of divine faithfulness. Circumstances, I've said this on many occasions, I just want to resurface this, circumstances don't make you and they don't break you. They reveal you. When things get good or things get bad, the real you comes out. And I think we could all say about COVID-19 with all the restrictions and all the stay at home and some of us have lost jobs and our faith is on the line, it really reveals who we are, loving or not loving, filled with faith or filled with doubt, really sweet or really grouchy, whatever it is, circumstances simply reveal who we are and we have during this time had to come face to face, not just with our kids and our wives and husbands and pets and projects at home but us.

We have to face us every day and hopefully God is using this to get us here, to be men and women of great patience, endurance as God is working these things out on us. Okay, let me give you faith fact number four. He lived for permanence. Abraham lived for permanence. Verse 10 tells us, for he waited for a city or for the city which has foundations. Remember he's wandering around in a tent, he's a pilgrim. For he waited for the city which has foundations whose builder and maker is God.

Go down to verse 14. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland and truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out they would have had opportunity to return but now they desire a better, that is a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God for he has prepared a city for them.

Abraham was a bad one. He wandered in tents while he was on the earth. And though he was promised land and he was in that promised land he was waiting for the ultimate promised land, a heavenly country it is called in verse 16. And then in verse 10 heaven is compared to a city.

I find this interesting. He waited for the city which has foundation. He came from a city of 300,000. He's wandering along the Euphrates River out in the wilderness, out in the open but he's waiting looking for the ultimate town, the ultimate city. So the Bible here refers to heaven as a country, refers to heaven as a city. Most often we're used to hearing heaven described as a kingdom. In the book of Daniel, the words of Jesus, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, we think of heaven as a kingdom. Here it's referred to as a city.

Do you know in the book of Revelation, at least part of heaven, is a big city which isn't typically how most people would imagine heaven. It's like a city. Like right now in COVID, you don't want to be in New York City. You want to be in Colorado or New Mexico with wide open spaces, right?

You want to be as socially distanced as you can. The idea of coming to a city with tons of people doesn't sound like heaven to us. We think Maui, not New York, right? But Revelation talks about the New Jerusalem, and that is a city that is 1,500 miles cubed. So 1,500 miles, the distance, 1,500 miles. If you went from Albuquerque to Spokane, Washington, that is 1,500 miles.

Or from Maine to Florida, that's 1,500 miles. So if you took that and made a cube, 1,500 miles cubed, that's how big the New Jerusalem is. It comes out of heaven toward the earth, not this earth, but a new heaven and a new earth. But part of our environment in the future will be a heavenly city called the New Jerusalem that we will enjoy. Why is the city important? The city is a place of fellowship and proximity.

There'll be nothing that separates us in heaven. That's the idea, at least, of the motif of the city, I believe. Also, a city is secure. Keep in mind, 2,000 years ago, people weren't dreaming of ranches in Montana, Colorado, or New Mexico. They were dreaming of living in a city with walls because it protected them. It kept them safe from intruders. So the idea of a city for ancients was it was a place of fellowship, it was a place of security, and it was a place of wealth, of storage. You store things in cities. There's resources.

There's amenities in cities. So we are, he was, looking for a city that has foundations whose builder and maker is God. Now, there's a fact check here. When the people around you who are unbelievers are telling you, well, look, all there is, is right now, right here, the earth. This is all there's going to be. This is all that you can expect, period.

That's fake news. There's a whole other real, really real world besides the real world that exists that we are awaiting, and that is the heavenly city, the heavenly country, the heavenly kingdom. And he lived for permanence. And then fifth, and finally, the fifth faith fact.

Boy, say that 10 times fast. The fifth faith fact for Abraham is that he lived in God's power. Abraham lived in God's power.

Verse 17. By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. Now we're taken forward at Genesis chapter 22 in this verse. By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promise offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, In Isaac your seed shall be called.

Concluding that God was able to raise him up even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense. Abraham when he was tested. Genesis 22 verse one opens up by saying, God tested Abraham.

He said, go to Moriah, go to the land, I'm going to show you this mountain, and offer your son Isaac as an offering, as a burnt offering. The word test in Hebrew means to prove the quality of something by adversity or suffering. To prove the quality of something by adversity. And God tests people. God does not tempt people. Sometimes the Bible uses the word tempt, that's like the old King Jimmy.

Modern translations will correct it. God tests, he never tempts people. The devil tempts, God tests. There's a big difference. Satan will tempt you to bring out the worst in you. God will test you to bring out the best in you.

That's his intention. Now for us, it's not easy to tell the difference. How can you tell the difference? Is this a test or a temptation?

Can I give you some advice on that? If you're wondering, I'm going through this hardship, I don't know if it's a temptation or if it's a test. It doesn't matter. In the end it doesn't really matter. Because in that circumstance, I would say Satan is trying to trip you up, but God is trying to temper you. So God would even use the temptation as a test to make you stronger.

So in the end it doesn't matter. Joseph, when he was, you know what he went through. He said to his brothers, you meant it for evil, God meant it for good.

Same circumstance. So you know what the test was? It was offering up his son. God touched the most sensitive nerve that God could touch in Abraham's life. Kill Isaac?

Why was that the most sensitive? Because, for one simple reason, think of all that we've studied so far. All of God's promises to Abraham were wrapped up in the existence and the continuation of Isaac. He waited 25 years for Isaac. Isaac represented his progeny of faith. Isaac represented the inheritance in the land of promise. Not only that, Isaac represented future salvation. Messianic hope.

In you all the nations of the earth will be blessed. That's a prophecy of the coming Messiah. So when God says, hey Abe, take your son that is the son of promise and go kill him. He's faced with a dilemma.

He's faced with an ethical and spiritual dilemma. Because the promise of God, all the promises of God require that Isaac live. But the command of God requires that Isaac die.

That's the dilemma. Am I dealing with a self-contradicting deity here? Because he says, here's Isaac, the son of promise.

I'm going to bless the world through Isaac. And now he says, go kill him. So, notice what it says in the text. We'll wrap this up. Verse 19, concluding. Concluding. That God was able, this is Abraham concluding, God was able to raise him up even from the dead, which he also received in a figurative sense.

Now here's what's noteworthy about the original story. We're not going to turn to it, but back in Genesis 22, when Abraham and Isaac and their servant come to the land of Moriah, Abraham takes Isaac and says to the servant, you stay here. The lad and I will go yonder and worship. And listen to what he says, and we will return to you.

Not I will return to you. We're going to go and worship, and we will return to you. Wait a minute, God said leave him on an altar dead.

But Abraham says, we will return to you. Why is that? Well, probably the night before he's not sleeping well. I'm thinking if you're going to kill your son the next day and you know it, because God said it, you're not having a good night's sleep. It's very, very unnerving and settling. It's that dilemma. It's that dilemma you go through.

Sometime in the night, it clicked. I get it. I get it. So you see the word concluding in verse 19? The Greek word is logizimai. Logizimai is where we get our word logic.

So let me give you a bad translation because it's not even a word. He logicized it. He applied logic to the situation. And so he reasoned, came up with one of two conclusions.

Either number one, God is erratic and can't be trusted, or number two, God is faithful and sovereign and can be trusted. Which means that I'm going to go up there and plunge a knife into my son, and God's going to raise him from the dead in front of my eyes, and we're going to come back and see the servant that I said we'd come back to. We're going to go worship, and we will be back. Sometime in the night, he concluded that God is going to raise his son from the dead because God said kill your son, but God said your son must live for all the promises I gave you to be fulfilled. There's only one conclusion logically I can come up with. God is going to miraculously raise my son to life in front of my eyes.

So we'll be back. He lived in God's power. What did he believe? Verse 19, that God was able.

Hang on to those words, brother and sister. God is able. What are you dealing with? God is able. What are you fearful of? God is able.

What are you struggling over? God is able. And another secret of Abraham, it said, stay here, the lad and I will go yonder and worship. Never forget to worship in the calamity like Job did, like Abraham did, like you and I must. Pause on the ash heap and worship God.

That wraps up Skip Heitzig's message for you from the series Fact Check. Right now, here's Skip to tell you how your support helps keep these messages coming your way and connects more people to God's truths. As we learned today, Abraham made life choices based on what he knew of God's character. So how can you know who God is? By studying His word. Our goal is to connect you to the Lord, and that's why we share these Bible teachings that you so love.

But your support is vital to keep them on the air and online. Give a gift today to help others get to know God. Here's how you can do that. Visit connectwithskip.com slash donate to give your gift today. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate or call 800-922-1888.

Again, that's 800-922-1888. Coming up tomorrow, Skip Heitzig begins a series called 20-20 and helps you sharpen your focus on God's truth in your life. Be sure to join us. Spiritual vision, spiritual clarity, spiritual acuity belongs to those who go to the optometrist, in this case, Dr. Jesus, and admit that they don't see as clearly as they ought to see. And He'll fix you up. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.