Waiting on the Promises of God

Suddenly, one day, God appears to Abraham, and he delivers to Abraham this singular message.

I want you to leave your family, leave your city, leave your country, and I want you to follow me and go to a land that I'm going to reveal to you and give to you. For from you will come a seed and a promise, ultimately a Messiah and a kingdom. And Abraham placed his faith in the reality of this living God, who at that moment shattered the myths of moon gods. What do you do when God asks you to wait? Abraham and Sarah spent their lives waiting on God's promises.

They left behind comfort and security, lived in tents, and believed in a future they would never see. Their story reveals the challenge of faith. It involves trusting God when the answers aren't immediate. If you've ever wrestled with doubt or wondered when God will fulfill his promises, this message is for you. Today, Stephen Davey will help you discover how faith sustains you in seasons of waiting and why God's timing is always perfect.

Here's Stephen now. There's an old hymn from my childhood that many of you may have sung as well growing up. The lyrics of the first stanza read, standing on the promises of Christ my King, through eternal ages let his praises ring. Glory in the highest I will shout and sing, standing on the promises of God. As I have studied this next hero of faith listed in the registry of Hebrews 11, these lyrics came back to my mind. However, with one little change, just one word, a change that I think better summarizes the lives of Abraham and Sarah. Instead of standing on the promises, I changed it to read, waiting on the promises. Listen to the second stanza with just that one word change. Waiting on the promises that cannot fail, in the howling storms of doubt and fear assail, by the living Word of God I shall prevail, waiting on the promises of God.

That fits them to a T, and maybe you as well. The writer of Hebrews now will condense chapters of Old Testament narrative and biography. It's going to span more than 100 years, and we're going to squeeze it into about 30 minutes. And in so doing, he presents the life of Abraham, the forefather of our faith in four movements. We're going to call the first movement the initiation of faith, the initiation of faith. Follow along as I read it, verse 8 of Hebrews 11. By faith Abraham, 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. By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents 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.

Now if you go back into the extended account of Abraham's life, which we're not going to do for the sake of time, I do want to pull a few things out. You discover that he was living in a city called Ur. U-R. It's a city on the Euphrates River that is now located in what is southern Iraq. Most people, when they hear the name of the city, Ur, they think of cavemen who dragged their wives around by the hair and they have clubs, right?

Well, you might be tempted to think that way. However, thanks to extensive archaeology, we have been shown once again that ancient mankind was actually brilliant and sophisticated and quite educated. Excavations going all the way back to the days of Abraham reveal cobblestone streets, academic buildings, and three-story houses with tiled floors. They've uncovered buildings with Ur stamped into each brick, a sign of organization and wealth and luxury. In fact, one discovery dating back to the time of Abraham, in one of them they found a clay tablet. And on that tablet, whoever it was who'd been using it was working out a problem in what we today call trigonometry, a problem they're still working on at Cambridge and Oxford at least 75 years ago.

Now having barely survived algebra one, I would not have recognized this problem. Archaeologists have also uncovered at Ur a massive ziggurat, a pyramid-shaped building, and they found at the top level a room covered with silver dedicated to their moon god, Namu. Some historians believe that Abraham's father was a high priest in this false religious system and that their family was one of the leading families in this city. And I'm telling you all of that to kind of give you a glimpse of the life of young Abraham. He was a member of a leading family. He was living in an organized, educated, wealthy city in the Middle East situated on the bank of the Euphrates River. And into that world, suddenly one day came God shrouded in His glory so to speak.

Just amazing. Stephen will preach of it as God appears to Abraham. And he delivers to Abraham this singular message.

I want you to leave your family, leave your city, leave your country, and I want you to follow me and go to a land that I'm going to reveal to you and give to you. For from you will come a seed and a promise, ultimately a Messiah and a kingdom. And Abraham placed his faith in the reality of this living God who at that moment shattered the myths of moon gods. And he obeyed and followed him. Now the writer of Hebrews 11 wants to make sure that his audience, which is primarily Jewish, it's written to the Hebrews, that they understand that the forefather of our faith, that his obedience did not produce his faith, nor can yours or mine.

His obedience proved his faith. And I love… I'm going to just pull out a few things, but I love this little phrase tucked inside verse 8. Look there. And he went out not knowing where he was going. I love that text. Maybe you ought to underline it. There were no billowy clouds, you know, pointing, promised land, 800 miles.

None of that. When you travel, you love those signs, don't you? They tell you where the pit stops are, they tell you where the gas stations are that match the credit cards in your wallet, and you look for those. And I drove, as you know, to Columbus, Ohio on Saturday. Last Saturday, preached on Sunday morning, drove back on Sunday afternoon, and I had written out the map, MapQuest, and I had a GPS on the dash of that rental vehicle, and that woman, that GPS woman was just chattering away, you know, at me. And I was looking, though, driving from the north to the south for the first appearance of that brown and beige billboard that said what was just ahead. Crack or barrel, amen. You know me well.

And I did stop in. Abraham had none of that. None of that. Just a command from God, and it's reiterated for us back in Genesis chapter 12, leave your country, leave your house of comfort, leave everything you know, and go to a land you don't know, and by the way, as you are leaving, this is the idea, I will be directing you. I want you to notice another phrase that can easily be missed in verse 9. It informs us that he moves out and he goes and he lives in tents. Now, we might be tempted to think, well, that's how they lived back then, you know, with their clubs and their wives by the hair. No, Abraham came from a wealthy family.

More than likely, his family owned one of those three-story homes with tiled floors, with courtyards they've excavated, luxurious gardens with a riverfront view. God is asking Abraham to leave all of that and go and live in a tent. That'd be like telling you, God coming to you and saying, I'm going to give you the land of Scotland.

Now, I want you to go live there in a camper. For how long, Lord? A hundred years.

That's exactly what he did. He lived in a tent moving about for a hundred years. In fact, when Abraham dies, the only thing he'll own in the land is a cave in which he has buried his wife. A picture of you and me as well. We've been promised this earth remade, and we're only going to own just a little piece of property called our grave.

But we're coming back. We're told that God revealed to Abraham, and it's startling to consider the implications of verse 10, that Abraham looked there. He's looking for a city which has foundations whose architect and builder is God.

So God evidently gave him a prophetic lesson that took him all the way to the consummation of the age. This is the city God made. This is the city of gates of pearl and streets of gold. What are you waiting for, Abraham? He could tell you, I'm waiting on the promises of God. A city. This would be the city, the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God that's described in the next chapter, Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 22.

I'm waiting for that. Oswald Chambers, as you know, wrote the devotional, My Utmost for His Highest. Actually, his wife wrote it after he died from his lecture notes.

He died suddenly after having an emergency appendectomy. He was young, in his 40s, and was lecturing in Cairo to servicemen. And he said this with his characteristic realism, and I guess the older I'm getting, the more I'm interested in people that are real, and they write that way, right?

I don't want any of this pie in the sky. Tell me what Christianity is really like. And he did that with his characteristic realism. He said this, the life of faith is not so much one of mounting up with wings as eagles, as it is a life of walking and not fainting. Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the one who is leading. In these four movements of faith we're given first the initiation of faith.

Secondly, I want to point out the cultivation of faith. And you might be wondering where Sarah is in all this. You know, one author provoked my thinking, was she kicking and fussing and fuming as she packed her bags for this far-fetched plan? And what's this about a promised land and a seed? And children, we don't have any. And all of this stuff, was she kicking and fuming as she mounted her camel?

We've left our beautiful home on the river for a tent for 100 years. Well, the author of Hebrews clarifies for us where she is. Verse 11, notice, by faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive even beyond the proper time of life since she considered him faithful who had promised.

She's right by his side. Therefore, there was born even of one man and him as good as dead at that. As many descendants as the stars of heaven in number and innumerable as the sand which is by the sea shore. What are you waiting for Sarah? I'm waiting too on the promises of God. Hudson Taylor, the pioneer missionary in China, I pulled off his biography on my shelf this week looking for this quote and I finally found it. He said it this way, if we are obeying God the responsibility rests with him and not with us. When you can't make it happen, it's alright, the responsibility of fulfilling the promise is God's. Faith is following God into the unknown and then waiting, having nothing but the promises of God. The third movement of faith given to us in Hebrews 11 is simply a restatement.

We'll cover it briefly. We'll call it the anticipation of faith. Look at verse 13 where he writes, all these, that is everybody associated with Abraham, Sarah, these patriarchs, all of these died in faith without receiving the promises but having seen and having welcomed them from a distance, having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. What are they waiting for? Verse 16, they desired a better country.

That word desire means to yearn after. And what better country is it that they're yearning after? A heavenly one, a city God had prepared for them. This city is represented by the promised land, the promised Messiah, the promised nation, the promised kingdom, and on and on.

And you notice he's saying that all these people died believing it was going to happen but it didn't happen while they were alive. Notice what they endured. They're called here back in verse 13, strangers and exiles, fascinating words. The word exile is for someone who wasn't really much higher than a slave in this social scale of the ancient world. They had to pay annual taxes as foreigners living in the land.

They were always considered outsiders by the rest of the community. And the word translated strangers is even more harsh. It can be translated refugees. They lived like refugees.

Where? In the land promised to them. In the second century, a letter was written by a man named Diognetus who wrote this of Christians and he summarized this spirit of promise by faith. He said this, to them that as Christians every foreign country is theirs, yet to them every country is foreign.

Isn't that good? If they had a theme song it would be something like, this world is not my home, I'm just what? I'm just passing through. We're not settlers. We're pilgrims passing through traveling onto this city made by God. And by the way that's what verses 20 and 22 are all about.

Let me have you skip down there and very quickly look. Verse 20, by faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, his twin grandsons, even regarding things to come. I mean can you see old Isaac communicating these prophecies and promises to his twin grandsons. He's effectively saying listen boys, there's a glorious city, there's a better country, there's a coming Messiah, this isn't all there is guys.

There are things to come. By faith he said that. Verse 21, by faith Jacob as he was dying blessed each of the sons of Joseph and what?

And complained that it hadn't happened yet. No, that's not what the text reads. And worshiped by faith. Verse 22, the legacy of faith continues. Now you have Joseph when he is dying made mention of the exodus of the sons of Israel and gave orders concerning his bones.

I love that. Joseph says look I've lived here just about all my life but I'm not an Egyptian and I don't want my bones in a pyramid. I want you to take my bones back to the land that we've been promised because I'm going to wait there as it were for the resurrection of the dead. By faith he's communicating this to the next generation. And these people died in faith.

They saw with 20-20 spiritual eyesight they believed the Word of God. What are you waiting for Isaac? What are you waiting for Jacob?

What are you waiting for Joseph? We're waiting on the promises of God. The fourth and final movement of faith in the life of Abraham is repeated for us. We've seen the initiation of faith and the cultivation of faith. We have in this last text the anticipation of faith. They're all waiting together. And now you have the declaration of faith.

Let me slow down here for a few moments. Verse 17, by faith Abraham when he was tested offered up Isaac. When he would receive the promises was offering up his only begotten son. And it was he to whom it was said in Isaac your descendants shall be called and he considered that God is able to raise, note this, people even from the dead from which then he also received Isaac back as a type that is a picture of Christ.

This was a test. God commands Abraham to offer up his son. But the promise had been that through Isaac his son would come this seed, this Messiah, this living nation numbering as the stars in the heavens and the sands of the sea. So you have the command of God which seems to be contradicting the promise of God.

It seems like it's going to nullify the promise. He's asking Abraham to give up his son. Is God some kind of Indian giver? You know, did he just sort of change everything when Abraham wasn't looking?

No. Isaac will picture Christ. But think of what God is asking of Abraham. He doesn't know how it's going to turn out like we know how it's going to turn out.

He believed by faith that Isaac would be resurrected from the dead but he didn't know when, perhaps even after his own death, he was asked to give up his son. I'm reminded of that well-known fable where the pig and the hen were out in the farmyard. They're out there talking over things, you know, trying to come up with something to do for the farmer who's taking such wonderful care of them. They thought and finally the hen said, I know, let's provide him breakfast. Tell you what, I'll give him the eggs and you give him the bacon.

Pig wasn't too bright but he thought about it for a minute and he said, no, no, no, wait a second, that's not fair. You're going to give him an offering. You're asking me to give him my life. What God is asking Abraham to do is make an irreplaceable sacrifice. If Isaac dies, by the way, it could be very well all over. So Abraham is putting everything on that altar. His hopes, his promise, his future, not to mention the object of his love and affection. And Isaac, by the way, is not a little boy. He's between the ages of 30 and 35. And because he's a picture of Christ, I won't be surprised one day to find out he's exactly 33. The son he'd waited for, the son that he'd raised, now give him back.

Give him back to me. I can still remember as if I were standing in that hallway at Baylor Hospital in Dallas, I was filling out in a flurry paperwork because the twins that we were expecting suddenly were coming a little sooner than we found out or planned. And that's a long story, but I was there and within a few hours our twins would be born and, you know, Marsha had been escorted down the hallway and she was out of sight and I was being given all these forms to fill.

I had no idea what I was filling. After all, I knew I had just signed up for five years in the Navy, but I was just firing them away. I'll never forget that woman holding one more out to me and she asked me this startling question. Do you and your wife intend to keep your babies after they're born? I looked at her and I said, of course. I'm sure, by the way, forms and admission procedures have changed in 27 years, but I was never asked that when our daughters were born. I remember asking her, well, why are you asking me that question? She said, well, we have a list of people who are waiting for parents to give up their infants and if you fill out this form, we're going to contact the next individual or couple at the head of the list. I said, do you mind if I ask you how many people are on that list?

She said about 2,000 couples and she said, that's just this hospital. My heart went out to them. With this being Adoption Sunday, can you imagine for a moment going through all the waiting and all the forms and all the money and all the travel and all the prayer and all of the agony and all the waiting and waiting and waiting only to be able to finally adopt your child and then you raise them and you train them and after a number of years, God comes along and says to you, put that child up for adoption.

I want you to give them away. See, either illustration will allow us to feel the pain in Abraham's heart with this incredible test of faith. I mean, what would cause Abraham to go through with this, obeying this command? We're told in verse 19, Abraham believed that God would raise Isaac up from the dead. He didn't know why God was going to do it this way. He didn't know when God would do this. He assumed that perhaps it would be soon or early or right away because they were going to come back to that servant who is waiting down there with a mule.

We're going to come back to you. He didn't know all of the nuances that we know of how Isaac pictured Jesus Christ, God's only Son. But Abraham and Isaac are walking up that hill and by the way, this is just as much a test of faith for Isaac as it is Abraham.

See, God had promised him, the descendant of Abraham, that through him the nation would come and now you're telling me, Dad, that I'm to die. But he went willingly, just as Jesus did. He lay upon that wood of, that altar of wood, just as Jesus was nailed to an altar of wood. The hill that Abraham and Isaac passed their test of faith upon is a place that would later become known as Golgotha.

The Romans took over that place and made it their official place of execution. Golgotha is on the northern summit of Mount Moriah where many believe Abraham prepared to offer. Isaac, I wouldn't be surprised to find out one day it was the very spot where Abraham offered Isaac or was willing to that Jesus Christ's cross was buried in that hill. The difference is of course in the analogy is that Isaac didn't die, Jesus did.

Isaac wasn't raised from the dead at that moment, Jesus was three days later. So you have Abraham, the father of faith, illustrating with Isaac the very gospel, the very consummation of our faith. For Jesus Christ literally died and he literally resurrected and he will literally come back and he will literally set up his kingdom in Israel in the land and he will rule the world and the faithful will reign with him on that day. So what are we waiting for? We are waiting on the promises of God.

We are too. In the meantime we pass our tests of faith as we continue to believe that God is going to make all things right, that God will give us strength to walk without fainting even though circumstances seem to contradict the promises. From this life of faith and all the heroes associated with Abraham, faith is walking into the unknown and then waiting and all you have to cling to are the promises of God which are not going to come true until after you've died. That's faith.

Believing that the responsibility is God's. I'm glad you joined us today. You're listening to Wisdom for the Heart, the Bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey. Today's lesson is called, Waiting on the Promises of God. It comes from Stephen's teaching series through Hebrews chapter 11, a series called Heroes.

Stephen has a hardback book that also comes from the series and it takes you through this entire chapter as Stephen looks at this Heroes Hall of Fame from the pages of scripture. If you'd be interested in getting a copy of this valuable resource, you'll find it on our website which is wisdomonline.org. Go there anytime to access this or any of the resources we have available. If you prefer, you can give us a call today. Ask how you can get a copy of Hebrews 11. We'd be happy to process your order right over the phone and get this resource sent to you. The phone number here in our Cary, North Carolina office is 866-48-BIBLE. That's 866-48-BIBLE or 866-482-4253. On tomorrow's broadcast, we continue looking at these Heroes by looking at the life of Moses. Join us again at this same time tomorrow right here on Wisdom for the Heart. . .