If I made you a promise today, how long would you be willing to wait for me to keep it? A few days? A week, maybe a month? I guess it depends on the promise, but how about 25 years? That's how long Abraham had to wait before God kept his promise. From the time he first told Abraham that he would be the farther of a great nation, to the time Issac was born, 25 years. Think about that for a while.
Paul calls Abraham the man of faith, with whom all those who have faith are blessed. For, as Paul points out later in Galatians, If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. This promise depends on the grace of God not on the law.
Because of all this, Abraham is a significant character in the story of faith. But was it all plain sailing, an easy walk of faith, for this hero of the early church?
First things first
In Genesis 11 we’re introduced to the family of Abram, not yet Abraham, we meet him with his brothers and father and cousins in the land of Ur.
In 11:31 it says that Terah took his son Abram and set out for Canaan, but they settled in Harran. Chapter 12 on the other hand seems to make it clear that the call was to Abram, and this call was to leave his father’s household and make the journey to Canaan.
The stop-over in Haran does not appear to figure in that call. Faith is not an easy road to walk. One of the characteristics of Abraham’s walk of faith is compromise.
He shares the land of promise with Lot, he has a son with Hagar, he goes to Egypt when there is famine. All compromises in their way.
Abraham may have been the man of faith, but he was also human, painfully human.
How long Abram lived with his family in Haran isn’t made clear, but God didn’t lose faith with Abram.
One other fact slips quietly into the equation. Sarai, Abram’s wife, can’t conceive.
To be childless in the Ancient world was a terrible thing. It lead to jealousy between Rachel and Leah, it was seen as an act of judgement against Abimelech’s household, and Peninnah pushed Hannah to tears over it.
Although a husband’s hopes and dreams were all wrapped up in the promise of a son, Abram kept faith with Sarai, even though a family seemed like a distant and diminishing hope.
Sarai’s determination to build a family eventually produced the compromise with Hagar. But this was not Abraham’s idea.
Having established then, that the call was to Abram and his home, which he was to leave behind, was Ur not Haran, the journey begins again, but the questions don’t stop.
Developing Faith
Faith and perseverance
I guess the big question in chapter 12 is simply this: God can promise, but can he provide? Abram reaches the destination, he arrives in Canaan, but there’s a famine. Centuries later the people of Israel would ask this question: Has God brought us out into the desert to kill us? The Devil tempts Jesus with a similar question: Will God let you fall?
Well, will he? Isn’t that what you want to know? If you step out in faith today will God let you fall flat on your face tomorrow? “No, of course not,” you say with confidence, but have to tried it? The way of faith is also a way of failure. Not on God’s part, but often on ours. It just isn’t that easy, and we should not pretend it is.
I’m not suggesting that we don’t step out in faith, in fact I’m desperate to take big steps instead of timid little ones. But faith needs to walk with perseverance if it’s going to make it to the end of the journey.
Faith and God’s unchanging word
God’s first promise to Abraham comes when he calls him to make the journey to Canaan:
I will make you into a great nation... I will make your name great... I will bless you (12:2-3).
In chapter 13 it is restated in terms of the greatness of his offspring and the promise of the land, and in 15 and 17 the promise of God is restated in the language of covenant. God’s word to Abraham doesn’t change through all this time, but then again, neither do the circumstances of Sarah childlessness.
God’s word does not change because God’s character does not change. Clearly this does not mean that God cannot change his mind so-to-speak, that he is in some way fixed. Abraham’s negotiation over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah demonstrate that. No, the significance of God’s unchanging word has to d with his trustworthiness with respect to our eternal destiny.
Does your hope of heaven rest upon what you can do to gain it or what God has done on your behalf?
God’s unchanging word means that when you feel distant from him, he remains close to you; when you feel as though your prayers aren’t being answered, he is still listening; when you wonder if it can all still be true, he remains true. Does God’s unchanging word mean that we will never doubt him, never doubt ourselves, never doubt the promises he has made? No. But it does mean that through our doubts we can say with confidence that no matter what we feel, God is the same yesterday, today and forever, and his word does not change.
Faith and Patience
So, while God’s word does not change, we face another challenge, the challenge of faith and patience.
How do you define patience? Is it active or passive? Does having patience mean that you simply sit back and wait for it, whatever it might be, to come to you, or does patience mean that whilst you pursue the ‘it’ you don’t lose sight of the need to wait? Complicated isn’t it!
FB Meyer on Abraham:
God has his set times. It is not for us to know them. Indeed, we cannot know them. We must wait for them. If God had told Abraham in Haran that he must wait all those years until he pressed the promised child to his bosom, his heart would have failed him. So in gracious love, the length of the weary years was hidden. And only as they are nearly spent and there were only a few more months to wait, God told him, according to the time of life, “Sarah shall have a son.”
If God told you on the front end how long you would wait to find the fulfilment of your desire or pleasure or dream, you’d lose heart. You’d grow weary on well doing. So would I. But he doesn’t. He just says, “Wait. I keep my word. I’m in no hurry. In the process of time I’m developing you to be ready for the promise.”
Here’s the key thought: I’m developing you to be ready for the promise. I always thing I’m ready, God has a different view.
Faith and Trust
Chapter 17 is a strategic turning point in Abraham’s life. It is the point when he becomes Abraham. God reiterates his promise, nothing new there, but something changes because changes Abram into Abraham. Ou don’t have to look far in most Bibles to discover that Abram means exalted father whereas Abraham means father of many. Now either name would seem insensitive for a man with no children, but God does not mock, he promises. Patience needs a partner, and the partner is trust.
As God’s promise becomes more explicit (up to this point God has not said how he will make Abraham the father of a great nation, now he makes it clear that it will be through a son born by Sarah), patience must walk with trust. Of course Abraham and Sarah fail to trust God fully and come up with a quick, human solution that inevitably leads to pain and heartache.
The challenge of trust is to allow God full control and to co-operate fully with him. It’s like riding a tandem. I’ve never ridden a tandem for two reasons. One, I’ve never had one, second I don’t want to be the one at the back! The one on the back has seems to have two responsibilities: First, keep pedalling. Second, don’t try to steer. I’ve ridden on the back of a motorbike a few times, and the hard thing is to try not to steer. I guess it’s similar on a tandem. The person driving needs to to be the one who steers. If the person on the back tries to steer then the driver has to fight them as well as steer the bike.
So it is with life lived in God’s hands. He must steer, we must trust.
Faith and Testing
The final element in Abraham’s journey of faith is the test. Now, his faith was tested all through the journey he was making. The famine he encountered when he first arrived in Canaan, the stop-over in Haran, the fear of being killed for Sarah. Many times his faith came up against an obstacle, a challenge. But this would be the greatest test.
Having lived through all those long weary years waiting for God to keep his promise of a son through Sarah, God now asks him, “Abraham will you give up even that son to me?” Every other test pales into insignificance in the light of this ultimate test.
You and I know the end form the beginning, but approach it again as if you didn’t. A son, an heir, not yet a father of many, but finally the father of one. It’s a start, a beginning. And now God says sacrifice him to me.
Abraham will you trust me still?
As they prepare the altar Isaac asks his father where the sacrifice is to be found. Abraham replies, “the Lord will provide a sacrifice.”
Is that a statement of hope, of faith, of desperation, of trust?
Abraham has come to that ultimate test of his maturing faith, and by the grace of God he comes through it. God does provide the sacrifice just as he will provide the sacrifice through his son Jesus Christ on the cross.
God reaffirms his promise to Abraham to make his descendants numerous and he reaffirms his promise to us never to leave us nor to forsake us because of the cross.
Finale: Home is where God says it is!
Eventually of course Abraham dies. He’s made it to 175, an old man full or years.
Now in the Ancient world the custom was that when you died, your body went home. Where did Abraham’s body go? Did it go to Ur of Chaldea, his ancestral home? No, it went to Canaan, his promised home. Home was where God said it would be.
When you die, and you go home, where will that be? I’m not talking about where they will put your body or your ashes, I’m talking about your eternal destiny. Where will home be in eternity?
Jesus promised a place if only you will trust him. If only you will walk the same walk of faith that Abraham made. A walk of faith and perseverance, of faith and God’s unchanging word, or faith and patience, of faith and trust and of faith and testing.
