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Abraham

October 22, 2017 Preacher: Jeff Griffis Series: Hebrews

Scripture: Hebrews 11:8–12

Heroes of Enduring Faith: Abraham & Sarah – Hebrews 11:8-12

 

  1. Pray & Intro – What comes to your mind first when you think of Abraham? (Go ahead and speak up.)
    1. [image] Trying to be like Abraham could be pretty intimidating… but remember our emphasis last week. [Evenas we talked about Abel, Enoch, and Noah… we clarified that…]
    2. So let’s not lose sight of that as we emphasize again today that our faith in God through Christ is demonstrated by our action, by the way we live. In fact, Hebrews emphasizes that the assurance you have of the genuineness of your saving faith is that you endure in faith. You KEEP trusting God, believing his promises, and living accordingly.
  2. READ & Discuss:
    1. (vv. 8-22 outlined) Abraham – the great Patriarch of faith (& his descendants)
      1. Faith obeys God’s call (8)
      2. Faith makes us foreigners (9-10)
      3. Faith believes God’s ability (11-12)
      4. [interlude] Faith’s reward is out of this world (13-16)
      5. Faith believes and obeys God at all costs (17-19)
      6. By faith we die with future hope – Isaac, Jacob, Joseph (20, 21, 22)
  • [Looking at the first three of those today] By Abraham’s example of enduring faith, we learn…
    1. Faith obeys God’s call (display v. 8)
      1. Abraham obeyed when he was called [by God] to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. – Now it’s too easy to focus on Abram’s obedience and not on what actually happened first!
        1. God chose Abram and called him. – God’s call is his initiative alone. What made Abram unique? Was Abram inherently special somehow of all the people on the earth? God’s sovereign choice set Abram apart. God chose Abram to make for himself a people for his possession who would represent him on the earth. They would be the recipients of his grace. They would reveal his goodness and be the display of His glory for all to see. – God chose. In his goodness, by his grace, and for his glory… God chose.
        2. Our response to God’s initiative is faith. Gen. 15:6 – God chose and Abraham had faith. God called and Abraham obeyed.
      2. More specifically, how was Abram called to exercise his faith?
        1. Now Abram’s father Terah… (Abram was his given name until God changed it in Gen. 17 to Abraham, “father of a multitude of nations”) [map] But Abram’s father Terah had decided to leave Ur (an important city in southern Babylonia to head for Canaan (BTW, Canaan as a land region is also later Israel is also later referred to as the region of Palestine (by Jesus’ day)) – But Terah settled in Haran.
        2. After Terah’s death, God called Abram to leave his kindred and go out. – See it in Gen. 12:1-3. – This covenant, confirmed in chapter 15 and again in Gen. 17, includes three promises: 1. Land 2. Seed (children – descendants) 3. Blessing (That God would bless him and through his seed/family line all the nations would be blessed. [a couple of things the author of Hebrews notes about God’s covenant with Abraham in explaining Abe’s obedience]
        3. (v. 8) He picks up on the fact that the first promise was “to a land I will show you” and describes that as “not knowing where he was going.” – Now it’s pretty tough to go somewhere when you don’t know where you’re going.  And honestly, it’s downright difficult to believe a promise that you can’t concretely wrap your hands around. – But when has God ever said that faith in him was going to be easy? (That’s why faith in him is… active trusting submission.)
        4. I don’t know about you, but I’m super picky about knowing where I’m going. – Which is why Google maps is the bomb. Google is like the Schwan’s truck of information, and Google maps is the Magnum Bar delivered to you on a silver platter. – If you invited me to your house for the first time and I didn’t have Google maps, I would drive you crazy (no pun intended) requiring very specific details for how to get to your house bc I HATE being lost or making wrong turns.
        5. How much more do we desire that big decisions in our lives have some pretty clear guiding directions, or at least principles? So when God says simply, “Follow me. I’ll be everything you need, and I’ll bless your obedience.” Abe could have been like, “Sure, but could you be more specific?” – Abe’s faith wasn’t in something vague, he didn’t know the details yet, but his faith was in the GOD who made the promise. – Your faith too is (or can be) in the ONE who saves. Your faith is NOT in the details of what your life will be like as a believer, or what God can do for you but in the God who makes the promise to rescue you through Jesus and adopt you as his own.
        6. To compound the difficulty, Abram also had to leave behind what WOULD have been his family inheritance. That would have been something sure to him, sort of guaranteed if you will. But he BELIEVED God that he was heading for something BETTER. – Do you understand that the author of Hebrews is trying desperately to say that about faith in Jesus? He is so much better than putting your faith in your religiosity just because it feels more “sure” to you. What is actually more sure is God, and God’s complete work in Christ is BETTER. And what he has called us to in this life is BETTER than anything we can muster on our own. And the land he is ultimately leading us to is far BETTER than anything this world offers. [But more on that in a minute… first:]
      3. While it is true that our faith is in God and not our ability, we can’t separate genuine faith from obedience. [see the first blank at the bottom, and #4 on back] What evidence is there in your life that you are obeying God’s call of faith? How can you tell that you prioritize following Jesus? (describe evidence – priorities and decisions) [see table on back]
        1. Can others tell (esp. those close to you) from observation that you are pursuing intimacy with God in your daily life?
        2. How are you encouraging this primary relationship in your core family relationships? (close friends)
        3. In service to the body of Christ, His church? (intentional ministry) – With how you invest your time, treasure, & talents? (even mental energy)
        4. How are you prioritizing God’s call on your life with major life decisions?
      4. We must learn from Abraham’s example that God initiates and we respond in faith, and that faith obeys God’s call. [Now next in vv. 9-10 our author makes an interesting point about Abraham’s obedient faith in the WAY that he lived. He does this to deliberately make a connection to us and our faith in the church age.]
    2. Faith makes us foreigners (on this earth) “By faith he went to live… as in a foreign land”
      1. You see, the point is made that even in the so-called promised land the patriarchs lived in tents because they believed that God had yet in store for them a future city of secure foundations, a true homeland for his people, a better country—a heavenly one. (most of those words I’ve taken directly from the ‘interlude’ verses of 13-16 where the author will make this his specific emphasis. This world is not our home. Our next time in Hebrews we will focus on that.)
        1. For now (vv. 9-10), see that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob lived in tents, temporary dwellings. As much wealth and workers and livestock and so on that Abe amassed in this life, he knew he was far richer in heaven. All of that stuff was just stuff, but the souls of those in his household were of far greater value. And when God told him to circumcise the males in his household to be a sign of being set apart, he did it!
        2. Anyway, the point is that they put confidence in God that he had in store for them something of much greater value in the future, a place called heaven, a city with perfectly secure foundations because the designer and builder is God! – What’s the bottom line with this description? So much BETTER! God designed us to be people who seek security. He just didn’t make us to seek it in the here and now. HE is perfectly trustworthy and HE is building a place of eternal security. There we will rest in perfect safety forever. Faith in God thru Christ assures that future for us. And do we not expect it to be better than anything we can devise if both the designer and builder is God himself? I believe that is the simple point: BETTER.
      2. I wonder if we behave like we believe that God’s kingdom, now inaugurated in Christ, is far more sure than worldly things we trust in for security. I wonder if we behave in daily living like we desire pursuing Christ more than pursuing earthly shadows. – The question is, which is BETTER?
      3. Are we truly living as foreigners in our own time & culture, or do we blend right in? (#3 on back)
        1. Make a list of the things that you expect the world to value. Ask yourself then if there’s clear evidence in your life that you value eternity and advancing the gospel more than this world and this life.
      4. So we should learn from Father Abe that faith obeys God’s call and that faith makes us foreigners in this world… and finally for today…
    3. Faith believes God’s ability to accomplish the extraordinary.
      1. I absolutely love it that verse 11 is about Sarah. “she considered him faithful who had promised”
        1. Bc we think of Sarah as the one who laughed at the notion of having a baby at 90 because of lack of faith. – That’s true, that’s exactly what happened. But we often overlook that Abraham had the same reaction first too. Gen. 17:17
        2. But here we also see that she repented and believed. In fact, Abraham they named their son Isaac, meaning he laughs, and Sarah said, Gen. 21:6.
      2. Do you claim faith but live faithlessly? – Faith believes God’s ability to accomplish the impossible. (Luke1:36-37 for Mary to conceive a child by the Holy Spirit, just as her relative Elizabeth had conceived in her old age, & Matt 19:25-26 after how difficult it is for a person with earthly riches to enter the kingdom of heaven)
      3. V. 12 is exactly as was promised, God delivered! - see Gen. 15:5-6
    4. (These three lessons from God’s promises to Abraham and his faith in God lead us to further application reminders for us in Branson in 2017):
      1. Faith is a display of God’s goodness, His grace, and His glory.
        1. We can get so down on ourselves that we become convinced that we don’t deserve God’s favor or that he couldn’t possibly want us or save us. We don’t see how WE can be like Abraham. But that’s the beauty of God’s grace and glory and goodness. – It isn’t about how good you are but how good He is. It’s not about you deserving his kindness. God’s favor is all grace. And both of those things are just as God desires them because it means that you don’t get glory from his wonderful and gracious rescuing and adopting you. He gets all the glory for what Jesus merited, and all the glory for the Holy Spirit reviving dead souls to spiritual life, and all the glory for being a perfect Father.
      2. By faith God accomplishes the extraordinary in you. – You might think, I’m no hero of the faith. But Faith comprehends and lives the mantra: “I’m no extraordinary hero, but he’s no ordinary God.” – Let’s give examples:   
        1. Is it not extraordinary to live in the world and culture we live in and to have saving faith at all? (where do we turn and see a right fear of God?) …To be a person enslaved to sin and spiritually dead, to be given the righteousness of Christ and made alive? Is that not a miracle?
        2. Is it not extraordinary to face the fiery trial of whether your newborn child lives or dies with trusting confidence in a God who is good, believing that he knows what’s best and does what supersedes even our desired outcome? To come through such hardship with your faith in tact? God’s grace at work in you by faith is indeed extraordinary.

 

More in Hebrews

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Equipped to Follow the Great Shepherd

June 24, 2018

Helping Leaders Lead

June 17, 2018

Follow the Leader: Leading Well