The life of faith demands a break with everything that is familiar, everything that is old. It's a new world, and even though you don't know what it is, because you don't really inherit it until you leave this one, it starts with a willingness to separate from everything that is familiar and visible. This is where every Christian's pilgrimage begins when you separate from the world. Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.
Perhaps you've heard that Abraham is a model of faith, but in order to follow his example, does that mean you need to leave your home and family and travel to a strange land, or that you need to trust God to give you a child in your old age? In what way should you, if you're a believer, model your life after? Abraham, consider that with John MacArthur today as he continues his series titled "A Faith That Pleases God." It's an in-depth look at the heroes in Hebrews chapter eleven, and with today's lesson.
Now, here's John. The scope of the writer, as I've been telling you in this particular section of the Book of Hebrews, is to prove that the doctrine of salvation by faith is an ancient doctrine. If salvation is going to be by faith, then it has to be modeled in Abraham, because Abraham is the central contact point between God and the revelation of His redemptive plan. His life becomes the pattern for all who come to God by faith to follow. It is completely a life of faith.
In Romans chapter four, the apostle Paul, wanting to defend justification by faith, writes in chapter four verse one: "What shall we then say that Abraham, our father, according to the flesh, has found? What about Abraham? How was he saved?" For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? And then he quotes Genesis fifteen six.
Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness. Against this is the basic thought of Judaism that a man had to earn his way to God. As we have seen, this is the basis of their whole Judaistic works system. They had decided that Abraham had a relationship with God and that Abraham was chosen and that Abraham was blessed because Abraham was better than everybody else. Abraham was chosen because he was the best, the most moral.
He was the best of all the the pagans. That's not what the Bible teaches. And to destroy this, the Holy Spirit here goes back to Abraham to reset the record, to establish the fact that Abraham was a man who came to God and lived with God by faith. The New Testament clearly says this again and again. He was justified by faith, and by faith alone.
That, of course, is a. Very, very dramatic change from what the Jews are used to. Another illustration of this comes from Paul's letter to the Galatians, chapter three, verse seven. Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. It is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham.
For even so, Abraham believed God, quoting Genesis fifteen six again, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Therefore, be sure that it is. Those who are of faith, who are the sons of Abraham, it's a matter of faith. The end of the chapter. The end of chapter three.
You are all sons of God. Verse twenty-six. Through faith in Christ Jesus. Verse twenty-nine. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants.
Now these passages that I read, a number of them go back to that statement in Genesis fifteen six. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. Throughout his life, he believed God. That's what set him apart. He lived by faith.
He accepted the word of God and acted on it.
Now that's what's behind the writer of Hebrews using Abraham here as his model of faith.
Now you'll notice that this account of Abraham goes from verse eight down to verse nineteen. That's a big chunk to take, so we're going to have to kind of go across it a little bit on the the light side.
Now, when you study the Word of God, we want to make sure we we approach it legitimately and not in an illegitimate fashion. We study it historically; we take it for its its historic value. But often, in looking at the accounts of Scripture, particularly the accounts in the Old Testament, We see them as sometimes the New Testament writers see them not only as historical fact, not only as covenantal fulfillment that what they are in themselves, but very often the New Testament writers look at something in the Old Testament and see it as analogous to a New Testament truth. And I want to show you that as you look at what is here in verses eight to nineteen, and you see the the elements of the life of faith that Abraham lived. You're going to see a pattern for all of us.
What we see in Abraham is analogous to our own faith experience.
So let's ask the question: What characterized Abraham as a man of faith? What were the components? Let me give you five features of faith that show us the completeness of Abraham's faith. This is consistent with him as the prototype. For all of us who are children of faith, here is grade A faith.
Here is five star faith. Here is the pattern for our life of faith. Let's begin with the pilgrimage of faith.
Okay, we'll just use some P words here. Keep you on track a little bit. The pilgrimage of faith. By faith Abraham, verse eight, when he was called, obeyed, by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.
This is let's call the pilgrimage of faith.
Now I just want you to grab that little phrase: "By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed; when he was called, obeyed." Something interesting here: "When he was called" is a present participle. It speaks of the response going on at the same time the calling is coming. His obedience then is immediate, so that in the very process of clarifying the call, the man is already in motion. In other words, a better way to translate it would be, Abraham, while being called, was obeying. This is indicative of the immediacy of his response, and it is faith because he went out.
Not knowing where he was going, he was told that he would be receiving an inheritance. He didn't know where it was. He didn't know what it was. Not knowing epistomai, which we get our English word epistemology, which has to do with knowledge, means to put one's attention to. It means to fix one's thoughts on.
Bottom line is, he was clueless. Had no concept, no idea of where this calling was taking him. How strong is this faith? Strong enough that when he has no idea where he's going, and he is leaving everything familiar and everything he knows, he never even bothers to think about it. Not knowing, not contemplating, not giving his attention to.
Not musing or fixing his thoughts, rather obedience that is so speedy, so consuming that it has no thought of anything other than obedience. It is not because he saw a brochure of Canaan. It isn't that somebody showed him what the shore was like at the Mediterranean, which would be a lot better than the Tigris-Euphrates rivers meandering through the. The Fertile Crescent in Mesopotamia, where he lived, it wasn't because somebody showed him a picture of a a great estate that he would have. But this is the pilgrimage of faith.
This is a pilgrimage of separation. Separation.
Now let me tell you about Abraham. He was a pagan. He was a pagan. He was an unregenerate pagan. He was where he was with the people.
He was talking the language. He was because he had been the product of the scattering of the people who were thrown all over the place from the Tower of Babel. He is not a secret believer in the true God. We don't have any evidence of that. He is just a pagan, like a lot of other pagans, and I might add, he isn't any better than anybody else.
And the Scripture never says he was any better than anybody else. Listen to me," says Isaiah fifty-one-one. "You who pursue righteousness, you listen to me." You want to pursue righteousness? You seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.
Look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave birth to you in pain when he was but one. I called him, then I blessed him and multiplied him. The statement that Isaiah is making here is: If you want to understand salvation, you look back and realize that you were dug out of a rock by the sovereign power of God. You were dug out of a pit. You were quarried out of the rock of paganism, heathendom.
More explicitly, Joshua twenty four two says that the father of Abraham, whose name was Terra T E R A H. Served other gods. He was not just a pagan. He was a he was polytheistic, not monotheistic. He was a sinner.
He belonged to a pagan family. He belonged to a pagan culture. He lived in a pagan city by the name of Ur in Chaldea, and he lived there until he was seventy years old. By the way, that is about 140 miles from where Babylon would later be built. But God appeared to him, and and this again is so analogous to the mighty work of salvation, when God appears to the sinner and quarries him as it were out of stone.
Here's how it happened. Back to what Stephen said, Act Seven, two. The glory, or the God of glory, appeared to our father Abraham. God showed up and said to him, "Leave your country and your relatives and come into the land that I will show you." And he left. What marvelous grace!
There is no other explanation for God choosing Abraham than sovereign intention, sovereign. Purpose: The God of Glory condescends to come to a pagan in the midst of thousands, hundreds of thousands of pagans living in what used to be the Garden of Eden before the flood. That area, a man sunk in sin, a man in the pit of iniquity, a man immersed in idolatry, and God singles out Abraham and gives him a command. To test whether he will believe in him, will he believe God enough to obey and go to the land that God promises to give him, even though he doesn't know where it is or what it's like? Nothing is said about his morality.
That is irrelevant. Do you understand that? God doesn't come along in sovereign grace and save the moral people. In fact, in Romans it says in the very section that's talking about Abraham that God justifies the ungodly.
Well, Abraham responded with faith. He believed God, and a separation took place. He left. He was in the act of obeying when God was still in the act of calling him, and that's the pilgrimage of faith. That's how it starts.
He left the land of his birth. He forsook his home, his estate. He severed his family ties. He left loved ones behind. He abandoned comfortable things, familiar things, to embrace total uncertainty.
This would, for the most part, have been an impossible thing for somebody to do, but the life of faith. Is willing because the life of faith is made willing in the day of divine power. If you want to embark upon the pilgrimage of faith, you make a break with idolatrous things. You make a break with the world. You make a break with familiar sinful patterns.
Jesus says this, doesn't he? Even in his own ministry, after hate your father, your mother, your sister, your brother, and even your own life, take up your cross, follow me. The life of faith demands a break with everything that is familiar, everything that is old. It's a new world, and even though you don't know what it is, because you don't really inherit it until you leave this one, it starts with a willingness to separate from everything that is familiar and visible. This is where every Christian's pilgrimage begins, when you separate from the world, when you.
As Paul described it, First Thessalonians one ten, and this is such a simple way to describe it. It says in that letter that the church Thessalonica could be characterized as those, verse nine rather, who turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God. I love the next line, first ten, to wait. For his son from heaven. That's what the break is.
We turn from idols. We turn from the world to wait. We haven't received our inheritance. We've been told what it is, and we've acted in faith on that. That was Abraham.
And in that sense, he is a figure for us. He is an analogy that we can see. The man of faith separates himself from the world to go toward an inheritance which he is promised, but which he will not see and inherit until a future that is at that point unknown to him. John says, "Love not the world. The things that are in the world.
If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." He's saying essentially the same thing. Or at the end of Galatians, Paul talks about being crucified to the world and the world to him. In other words, when he came to Christ, he died to his interest in the world. The world no longer had any grip on him. Or in the words of James, friendship with the world is enmity with God.
You make your choice. You you make the decision to let the world go. Peter writes it this way: Do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy also in all your behavior. You let go of those things. Paul says you set your affections on things above and not on things on the earth.
You no longer are connected or yoked together with unbelievers in the common, familiar way. You always used to be. That's the pilgrimage of faith, and we certainly saw that in Abraham. Let's go back to verse eight a minute. He went out not knowing where he was going.
This is what Paul calls in Romans one five the obedience of faith. No idea where he is going. This is a pilgrimage of faith. That is faith. You don't know where you're going.
You've never seen where you're going. You've never experienced where you're going. That's where we are, folks. We walk by faith and not by sight. By the way, this this journey of Abraham took a long time.
He spent five years in a town called Haran, which was a in the wrong direction. Basically, going to the land of Canaan would have been south and west, and he went north and spent at least five years in the land of Haran, waiting for this to unfold. But his faith never, ever wavered. That's where the pilgrimage of faith. Begins.
Let's look at the patience of faith, verses nine and ten. By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, in a foreign land, dwelling intense with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise. For he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. He is an alien, and as I read you in Acts seven five, he doesn't even own any land. He he's just he's a nomad.
He has gathered up everything he owns and all the people he owns. And while he was in Haran, he accumulated a mass more of them. It refers to the fact that he developed more people. It doesn't necessarily mean family. Probably, as he accumulated wealth and along the way accumulated perhaps more servants to work with him.
But he is an alien. He is in the land of promise, but he's an alien. He never really takes possession of anything. It's like living in a foreign land. He's a tent dweller, along with Isaac and Jacob, who followed him, to whom the same covenant promise was made and reiterated.
He sojourns, literally paroikao. Oikeo means to to live in a house. Para alongside, so he kind of lived alongside to dwell beside. He he's a foreigner living alongside the people who live in the land. It is promised to him, but it is never really possessed.
You can read more about that in Genesis chapter twenty three. And those who came after him shared that same kind of life. Isaac and Jacob, the heirs of promise. Wasn't very long till all of their family was hauled off. Remember, into Egypt, and the people of Abraham's lines were there for four hundred years.
So he is separated from his old life. He's in a land that he really doesn't yet possess. He is a stranger in the world. He is living in a tent. He is a nomad.
I think this too is simply analogous to how we live as believers.
Someday, this world will be ours, right? There is coming a day when the Lord Jesus establishes millennial kingdom on the earth, when the earth is renovated from from east to west and north to south, when the curse is reversed. And there will be glory that fills the earth, and Christ will reign, and the lion will lie down with the lamb, and the desert will blossom like a rose, and all the things that the prophets talked about will come to pass on the earth, and we will inherit the earth. But right now, we're just tent dwellers here. We don't really see the possession of our inheritance.
We are pilgrims living alongside the people in this world. Without ever taking possession of what is promised to us, the old chorus said, "This world is not my home." So you don't want to invest too much in it, right? Not this version of it. Lay up your treasure in heaven. Spend your your life and your assets and your powers on things that have The ability to show up in the future, in the millennium, and the eternal new heaven and new earth, work for the real rewards, not for the ashes of this earth.
And I say ashes because it's going to disintegrate in a holocaust of fire.
So here is Abraham, God's promise never seen by him in his life. He never owned land. Wandered through Israel, Canaan, as a tent dweller, but never abandoned his faith in a future promise. I think the hardest time of all is the time in between, at the time when the pilgrimage begins.
Some excitement. God came to me. God in His glory came to me. The true and living God came to me. A pagan man.
He spoke to me, and. By his power, I believed what he said. Then it was all so wonderful. It was all so glorious. It was all so empowering.
He scooped up everything he had and began the pilgrimage. The glow and the glory of that moment, maybe driving him at the beginning. But then there's that in between, as he goes to Heron, as He sits there for at least five years until he was seventy-five years old. Doesn't see the promise, and then migrates all the way back southwest to the land of Canaan. Goes into the land and is never anything other than a stranger there.
But this is the patience of faith. This is the challenge. This is a challenge for us as well. It's analogous for us to remaining to remain faithful and keep our our faith strong, and joyful, and full of anticipation in the long period between the glorious moment of our salvation and the ultimate moment of our glorification. He didn't give up his hope.
He he continued in hope. He continued in faith. He continued to hold the promise of God high. It drove him. It motivated him.
It pressed him forward. The man of faith is not the man whose whose faith is always blazing like some shooting star, some meteorite, but whose faith, like a light, is steady. And relentless, when there's nothing to do but wait, when maybe there's pain in life and disappointment in life, and fear sets in, and faith is sustained. Abraham never grows impatient, never tries to grab a little of the world's goodies like Lot. Cost him didn't it?
He wanted to pitch his tent towards Sodom and live with the world. His story is a monumental tragedy. The faith of Abraham didn't didn't fail. The faith of Isaac didn't fail. The faith of Jacob didn't fail.
That's the patience of faith. You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. John's current series is titled "A Faith That Pleases God." Today, John emphasized that God didn't make Abraham the patriarch of Israel because of any amazing character traits. In fact, Abraham was an ordinary man. An important reminder that God doesn't need extraordinary people to accomplish.
Purposes. Here were some of John's thoughts on that. Yeah.
Well, in one sense, none of us is extraordinary. Because we're all sinners, we all fall short of the glory of God. We all are marked by corruption and ignorance and impotence to one degree or another. We we are all frail. In fact, even the best of us, the apostle Paul, saw himself as a clay pot, nothing more than something that was ugly and breakable and replaceable.
He even referred to himself as the off scouring, like scum. On the bottom of a of a cooking pan or something.
So if God couldn't use those kinds of people, He couldn't do His work through people because really that's all He's got. Paul said, "I am what I am by the grace of God." You know, the Lord picked him up when he was a blasphemer and injurious and persecuting the church and hating the name of Christ and. This is the wonderful miracle of regeneration, and it's the miracle of the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit that He takes alien people who were enemies of God, who hated God, redeems them, saves them, gifts them, fills them with His Holy Spirit, and turns them into. Unlikely heroes. That reminds me to mention the book that I wrote called Twelve Unlikely Heroes.
What do I mean by hero?
Well, not what comes to mind today. Being a hero nowadays seems to belong to people who are athletes or people who do damage and wreak havoc in some act of vengeance. We're not talking about that. We're talking about a real hero, somebody who makes the world better, somebody who is used by God to. Bring the transforming gospel of Jesus Christ.
Somebody who serves the good of people, the best good of all, the gospel, and who lives to the glory of God. Twelve unlikely heroes. Looks at the biblical heroes: Enoch, Joseph, Miriam, Gideon, Samson, Jonathan, Esther, Mark, and four more. It's a hardcover book, 220 pages. Available now from Grace to You.
The title: Twelve Unlikely Heroes. Yes, friend. This book looks at a dozen. And Bible characters, who improbably became remarkable all-time heroes of the faith, and it shows you how to follow their examples. To order a copy of Twelve Unlikely Heroes and be challenged to embrace a life of biblical courage, contact us today.
Shipping is free for Twelve Unlikely Heroes, and it costs ten dollars. To order, call us at eight hundred fifty-five Grace, or visit our website gty dot org. The title again: Twelve Unlikely Heroes. To pick up this encouraging book, an ideal resource to study with someone you're discipling, call eight hundred fifty-five Grace, or shop online at gty dot org. And whether you're wanting to study the lives of Old Testament saints, or what Scripture says about your role in the church, or any other biblical topic, let me suggest our flagship resource, the MacArthur Study Bible.
And keep in mind, from now through Friday, October 30th, you can get the Legacy Standard Edition of the MacArthur Study Bible in brown leather soft cover at 25 off. To take advantage of the reduced price, maybe pick up copies for Christmas gifts. Visit gty dot org or call eight hundred fifty five Grace.
Now for the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for making this broadcast part of your day, and be back tomorrow as John MacArthur shows you how you can trust God even when it's hard to believe what He says. It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on grace to you.
