If you have your Bibles this morning, turn with me to Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11. So we continue on with the Hall of Faith in Hebrews chapter 11. Last week, we looked at a few different people, but we really kind of focused on Noah and how Noah had faith even though he wasn’t sure about what God was going to do, but yet he had faith anyway. And this morning, we’re going to talk a little bit about Abraham and Sarah. And as we go through this and we look at these Old Testament saints through the book of Hebrews chapter 11, we’re going to see some amazing stories. And one of the things that I want to really bring out and let you know about how amazing God’s word is, is even in the Old Testament. A lot of people will say that’s not as relevant today, that the Old Testament was for before Christ, that it’s not as important today. But I would tell you that the Old Testament is just as much the word of God as the New Testament is. And I’m so thankful that we have it. And here we’ll see this morning that not only is it just as important, but even back in the Old Testament, in the days before Christ, that people were saved the same way that we are saved today.
\Faith is easy to talk about whenever we can see the outcome. It’s easy to have faith in something, right? How many of you would say it’s easy to believe that we’re in a building this morning? Well, I’ve got faith in that. I can look around and I can see it. How many of you would say it’s easy to have faith whenever we can see the outcome, whenever we can see what’s going on? But what happens when God calls us to move without showing us where we’re going? I like to know where I’m going. I like to know what I’m doing. Whenever me and my wife go somewhere, if we get that one date night every so often, and we try to figure out– I want to know what we’re doing. I don’t want to just show up somewhere and be looking around, fiddling with my thumbs. I want to know where I’m going. I want to know what I’m doing. If we ever are going to Little Rock for something, if there’s a doctor’s appointment or if there’s something, we’re one of those families that you got to eat when you’re up there because there’s stuff up there that we don’t have down here. And that’s the other rule is you have to eat something that you can’t get at home. And so, on the way up there, I will tell her, “Where are we going to eat? Figure it out, because I don’t want to get hungry and then have to decide where we’re going to eat.” I want to know before. It’s something that, I guess it’s just part of me. There’s some people in the world that they like to just fly by the seat of their britches. I like to know what’s going on and where we’re going. But what if God tells us to go without knowing where we’re going? What if He promises us something that we haven’t received? Or what if He leads us through life and parts of our lives that we all go through, and He doesn’t tell us, or rather maybe I should say, it doesn’t turn out the way that we think it should? Because that happens so often, right? A lot of times, maybe even I’ll know where I’m going, I’ll know what the point of it is, but it doesn’t turn out the way that I think it should. Anybody else do that? You get a picture in your mind of what something’s going to be or what something’s going to look like or how something’s going to go, and it just doesn’t go that way. It doesn’t go the way you expected. And sometimes we get let down, and sometimes it can even discourage us and have us quit. But in Genesis chapter 12, God called Abraham to go without telling him where he was going. He told him to leave his homeland.
He told him to leave his family. He told him to leave the things that he was familiar with, and He told him to go. My first question would have been, “Go where?” Right? But we don’t see that from Abraham. We see him go. God promised Abraham a great nation, but there was a problem. Said there would be great nation come from you, descendants, unnumberable, and there was a problem. He didn’t have a child, and he was past the age of being a dad, and his wife, Sarah, was past the age of bearing children. And not only that, but God promised him this, and then years still passed. Whenever I get promised something, I want it right then. I don’t want to wait for it. I don’t want to see it off in the future. I want it whenever I’m told about it. I’m one of those that if I buy you a present, it’s probably not going to make it until the time you’re supposed to receive the present. Because I just want to give it to you. I want to show you. I get something for my wife. If I get it two weeks before Christmas, I’ll say, “I went and bought you a Christmas present today.” And she’ll say, “Okay.” I say, “You want it?” Sometimes she’ll say, “No, I don’t want it. Wait for Christmas.” And I’ll say, “Well, but are you sure? I mean, I got it. I can give it to you. I can tell you what it is.” We’re impatient in that way. But finally, whenever Abraham was 100 and Sarah was 90, God fulfilled His promise as He always does
God fulfilled His promise with a son. His name was Isaac. And yet Abraham, as I told you in the beginning, he was told to go without knowing where he was going. He still never fully possessed the land that God promised him. Can you imagine that? That you’re promised this land, this great place. God said, “Leave what you’re used to. Leave what you know and go, and I’m going to give you a land.” And you travel, and you go, and you never possess this land. You live in tents, and you trust God completely for everything that you have and for everything that you need. And Abraham died without fully receiving what God had promised him. Abraham couldn’t see the whole picture, but he trusted God who had gave the promise. Faith trusts God’s promises even when we cannot see their fulfillment. If you have your Bibles, we’re going to begin reading there in verse eight of Hebrews chapter 11. It says, “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should receive after for an inheritance, obeyed and went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Through faith also Sara received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised. Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the seashore innumerable.
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.” Let’s go to the Lord in a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the love that you give us. Lord, I’m so very grateful that we can put our faith in you because you never fail. You’ve never let us down. You always come through. Though it may not be what we foresaw, though it may not be the way we thought it should go, though it may not be, Lord, even what we want sometimes, we know that you have never, never let me down. And Lord, I pray that as I preach this morning, that you’d be with me, that you would hide me behind the cross, that I would decrease, Lord, and you would increase. And Lord, I just pray that if there’s one here today who needs to make a decision for you, that today would be the day that they would come to know Jesus Christ as their Savior. It’s in Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
This passage of scripture has so much in it, and really and truthfully, we’re not going to be able to do it justice this morning because there’s so much packed in here. I encourage you, if you have some time this week, go and read the life of Abraham. The life of Abraham is one that is so not only interesting, but it’s so packed full of amazing things that God did in the lives of his people. And one of the things that I always take away from Abraham is what happens whenever you do what God leads you to do. There’s something to be said for Abraham. Was Abraham a perfect man? No. Did Abraham make mistakes and mess up? Absolutely. But one of the things that always struck me, and strikes me whenever I read about Abraham, is he does what God tells him to do. One of the things that comes out that everybody remembers about Abraham is whenever God told him to go and sacrifice his son, Isaac. And if you go and you read that passage of scripture, which we don’t have time this morning, but if you go and you read that passage of scripture, you will see where God says, “Abraham.” And Abraham says, “Here I am.” And then he says, “I want you to go and sacrifice your son.” And then if you read the next verse, it says Abraham woke up early the next morning. He didn’t piddle around. He didn’t lollygag. He said, “I’m going to do what God said.” And then whenever he’s going up to the mountain where God told him to go, and he’s got his son, Isaac, and his son’s carrying the wood. And Isaac said, “Dad, we’ve got the fire, we’ve got the altar, we’ve got the wood, but we don’t have a sacrifice.” And Abraham said, “God will provide a sacrifice.”
He was not worried one bit. And we will even see in this passage of scripture, in Hebrews chapter 11, that Abraham had faith that if he did sacrifice his son, that he would be risen, and God would raise him up. But let’s get into our message this morning. The first thing that I want us to bring out in verse eight is faith follows without seeing. It says, “By faith, when he was called to go, he went out, not knowing where he was going.” Again, as I mentioned in the beginning of this message, there’s so many times that God will tell us to go, and we want to know the destination. We want to know why. Has God ever told you to do something, and the next words that came out of your mouth was “Why?” There’s been so many times where I have felt like God was leading me to do something, or God was telling me that I should go, and I should do, or I should say something to someone, and I’ll start to have a conversation with God. And usually, my conversation will start with, “Well, why?” And then if it’s something that I don’t want to do or it’s something that I’m uncomfortable with, I’ll usually try to tell God why that’s not necessarily the best idea. Or I’ll tell God, “But now, God, I know that that’s something that I should do, and I know that you’re telling me to do it this way, but listen,: if I will do it this way, it’ll be so much better.” Like I know better than God. But God called Abraham to leave what was familiar. Again, we don’t have time to cover everything, but where Abraham was, he was comfortable. Abraham was a man who was wealthy. Abraham had his family around him. Abraham was comfortable, and God said, “Leave what you’re comfortable with. Leave what you’re familiar with, and go. And I’m not going to tell you where you’re going.” How many of you would’ve said, “Well, I feel like God’s telling me to do something. I just don’t know what it is”?
You know, I think that we use that as a crutch sometimes. We know exactly what it is that God is calling us to do, but maybe it’s because it’s something that we don’t want to do, or maybe because it’s something that we’re not comfortable with. We’ll reason within ourself and say, “Well, that can’t possibly be what God’s wanting me to do. So I’m going to just sit around and I’m going to wait for God to reveal to me what it is that he wants me to do,” even when we know exactly what it is that God wants us to do.
I don’t like this saying, even though I’ve probably used it, I’ll probably use it in the future. But when God opens a door, that we go through that door. I don’t like that saying because sometimes we can open our own doors, and we can say God did it. Sometimes that door is shut, and we can kick the door in and go through it, and we can say, “Well, God opened this door for me.” Not just because we are not to be beings that just are waved about with things that happen in the world today. Let’s say that God calls me to go somewhere. What should I do? I should go. Well, let’s say that someone calls me to go somewhere. Should I say, “Well, they must be a spokesman of God because they called me to go?” No. I should have discernment. I should use what God gave me. God gave me a brain, and God will give me more than a brain. God will give me wisdom. And James says that if you lack wisdom, to ask. And if you ask, He will give it to you.
He told them not only to listen and to go, but then to be obedient by faith. Is it easy to trust in general? It’s not, right? Matter of fact, I’ll do a little experiment here. If somebody comes up to you, and they’ve got a really nice smile, and they seem like a really nice person. And they come up, and they hug you, or they shake your hand, and they say, “You can trust me.”
What’s your first thought?: Your first thought– I’m talking about a nice-looking person with a nice, warm smile, and they seem like they’re a really good person, but as soon as they say, “You can trust me,” what is our immediate response? “They are lying. Whatever is fixing to come out of their mouth, they’re lying to me.” That is who we are. It is not easy for us to trust. But I can promise you that if you will trust the Lord, He will never lead you astray. If we will have obedience, and: trusting in Him, everything will go the way God intends it to go. And I want things to go the way God intends them to go, even more than I want things to go the way I intend for them to go. He didn’t know where he was going, but he had faith anyway. Faith doesn’t require us to know every single step that we have to take. I think that’s another place where we fail, and we fail tremendously, is we think we’ve got to know what the next step is. We’ve got to be three steps ahead. We’ve got to know what’s going to happen. “Okay, well, if I do that, then what’s going to happen?” But we don’t need to worry about what’s going to happen. We just need to say when God says, “Go,” we say, “Okay.” When God says, “Step here,” we step there. When God says, “Go down this road,” we go down that road, and we trust Him because of who He is. And the thing about God, it’s not a blind trust. Though they didn’t know where they were going, were they just blind and not having any guidance and any leadership? No. The truth about God, and the amazing thing about God is He will tell us to go, but He will be with us every step of the way. He doesn’t just say, “I want you to take off walking that way, and just keep walking until I tell you any different.” No. He says, “Go that way.” And I picture things. I’ve told you, I picture things in my mind. It’s like He’s standing there, and we’re having a conversation, and He says, “Go that way.” And He waits for me to take that first step. But whenever I take that first step intending to go that way, He is right there all the way. And He gets in front, He leads. And as long as we will follow Jesus, as long as we will follow the Lord, everything will be taken care of because you can trust the Lord. Second thing in verse nine, it says, “By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, went to a strange country, dwelled in tents with Isaac and Jacob. For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. And Sarah received strength to conceive a seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age,” she was 90 years old, “because she judged him faithful who had promised. Therefore sprang there even of one, who as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky and the sands which is by the sea number.” Faith trusts without receiving. He went looking for the place God told him to go.
You know what a lot of us would’ve wanted to have done? Say, “God, show me the city and then I’ll go. Show me where I’m going and then I’ll go. Show me what it looks like and then I’ll go. Show me what I’m going to be doing and then I’ll go.” But God told Abraham to go. He said, “I’m not going to tell you where you’re going, but this is what I promise you.” Abraham said, “That’s good enough.”
Side note here, what God tells you is good enough.
We were talking on Wednesday night about Job. And we know Job, the life of Job. He endured so many terrible things. Lost his family, lost his wealth, sores all over his body. Three friends who didn’t help any. A wife who said, “Curse God and die.” And we all know why it happened, but if you read the scriptures, you know the only answer that Job got? The only thing Job got whenever he was questioning and asking God why, was God saying– If you don’t believe me, you can go to Job 38 after church today and look it up. I’m going to put it in Arkansas terms. God said, “Come here, big boy. Put your big boy pants on and come here, and I’m going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to answer me.” And then He pretty much asks him, “Who do you think you are? I’m God. I’m in control.” He says, “Job, where were you whenever I created the earth? Job, where were you whenever I hold this thing together? Where were you whenever I sustained the earth? Where were you when I created man? Where were you when I created the animals? Where were you whenever all these things were taking place?” And then it’s kind of like, “Oh, yeah, you weren’t there.” Job never got an answer. God said, “Who do you think you are?” Job died having gone through all that, never knowing why. Never knowing why. Was that good enough from God? Yes, that was good enough. What does God owe us?Nothing.
I’m going to try and get back on the sermon, but I just want to say this. I think that we ought to ask ourselves that question of who do you think you are whenever we think that we have a right to hear an explanation from God of something. Who do we think we are? He’s God. If God did it, who are we to question? Now, again, I don’t think it’s wrong, as I said Wednesday night, I don’t think it’s wrong to ask God why. I don’t think it’s wrong to say, “God, why is this happening?” I don’t think it’s wrong to be curious, to want to know. But if God doesn’t tell you, we shouldn’t think that we are owed an explanation. God doesn’t owe us anything. You know what we should do? We should have faith that God can be trusted. Faith lives as a pilgrim. It says he dwelt in tents. He was looking beyond temporary earthly security, and he was trusting what God had promised. We’re just pilgrims here, folks. We are just here for a moment. Life is short.Life is just a vapor. Life is here today and gone tomorrow. The truth of the matter is that there may be someone sitting here today who will not be here alive next week.
That is the truth of the matter, and none of you can say, “It’s not me” with 100% certainty. We are just pilgrims. We are just here for a little while. But while we are here, what God leads us to do, we should do. Faith believes God can do the impossible. What do you think Abraham thought whenever he was old age and God said, “You’re going to have a child,” and his wife was in old age, and he says, “You’re going to bear a son”? What do you think they thought? “Huh? Yeah, right. Yeah, right.” But Sarah was 90 years old. I don’t want to pick on you, Miss Shirley. You’re 90 years old, right? Blessed by God. What would you do if I come up to you and I said, “I think you’re going to have a baby”?
I’d probably faint.
You wouldn’t believe me. She wouldn’t believe me. But listen, God told Sarah, “You’re going to conceive,” and guess what happened? God did the impossible. How many times does God lead us to do something and we say, “That can’t happen. That’s not possible”? We don’t need to put God in this little box. Our God made the box.
We are not serving some god who is just hindered by the things that are in this world. My God made the world.: He’s not hindered by it. If my God said it, it’ll happen. If my God tells me, then I believe it. God’s promises are not limited by our circumstances. God’s promises are not limited by even this earth. God’s promises and his faithfulness does not depend on how quickly we see results. As I mentioned, Job never saw the results. Job didn’t know he defeated Satan. Job didn’t know that God had a plan. Job didn’t know that thousands and thousands of years later, that a church in Garnett, Arkansas, was going to be teaching about the faithfulness that he had, but God did. There’s always a point.
Lastly, verse 13, it says, “These all died in faith.””Not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off.” They were persuaded of them. They believed them. They embraced them. “And they confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly. Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city.” Faith looks beyond this world. This world is not my home.
They died believing. Had they ever seen? They didn’t see. They didn’t know. They did not even comprehend all that God had promised them, but what did they do? They died believing it. They died with no– Do you think Abraham and Sarah had any doubt? I believe they had zero doubt. I believe that they knew that God said… I think the only doubt they had was, “Don’t know where we’re going, but God’s going to handle it.” They died believing. They had not received the complete fulfillment of God’s promises, but they saw them afar off, and they embraced them. They believed them. I want to ask you a question. Have you embraced the promises of God? I’m not saying, do you know them? There’s a difference in knowing what the promises are and embracing them. There’s a difference in knowing that Jesus Christ offers eternal life through his bloodshed on Calvary’s cross, and there’s another thing in embracing them.
There’s one thing to say, “I trust someone that will catch me if I fall,” and actually taking that step and falling and allowing them to catch you. There’s a difference in believing it and embracing it. Embracing it is walking out what you believe. I can say I believe something all day long, but for lack of a better term, until I put my money where my mouth is, I’ve not embraced it. We ought to walk the walk. But they died having not received these promises. And look, it tells them right here that– It tells us rather right here that they had a desire to seek that which God had promised. It says in verse 15 that if they had been mindful of that country from where they came from, they probably would’ve went back. Said if they would have been longing from where they came from, if they would have kept in their mind where we came from. You know, I miss so bad where we were at. I miss so bad whenever we were comfortable. I miss so bad whenever all our family was around us and then God had to tell us to go. You know, now that I’m thinking about it, now that I’m talking about it, and we’re having this discussion about it, I think we ought to just turn around and we ought to just go back. At least there we had a house. We’re living in tents here. At least there we had wealth and people respected us. Here, we may not find a place to take a bath for a few weeks. We ought to just go back.” But they didn’t, and the reason that they didn’t is because they left that behind them whenever they said that they were going to follow and do what God said to do. We’ve got to be the same way.
I don’t want to go back where I came from. I know what God saved me from. I don’t want to go back. I know what God has done for me. I don’t want to go back. I want to keep going. I want to get the next thing God has promised me. I want to see the next thing God’s going to do. I want to know the next thing that God is going to allow me to see that He has done. How about this? I want to do the next thing God allows me to participate in for His kingdom.: That’s what I want. I don’t want to go back. They desired a better country.
I hope you do because there’s coming a day for all of us that this life will end, every single one of us. We don’t know when that is. It could be today, it could be tomorrow, it could be 50 years from now. But there is coming a day in which this life will end. What will your eyes be set on? Will they be set on that which only you’ve seen? Or will you have faith in the unseen? See, if we only have our eyes set on the things that we have seen, then we go into death, we go into that time, we go into living our life really scared and not knowing because we don’t know what’s on the other side of closing our eyes. But when we have faith in the promises of God, we can close our eyes and have faith in what we’ve never seen before.
Do you have faith in something you’ve never seen before? I’ve got faith that I’ve never seen before. Second Corinthians 5:7 tells us that we walk by faith and not by sight. I’ve never seen God. I’ve never seen Heaven, but praise the Lord, God gave me a promise that one day my faith will be sight. I’m going to see Jesus. I believe He’s going to hug me. I believe that He’s going to wipe away the tears from my eyes. I believe I’m going to see those that have gone on, that trusted in the Lord, that loved the Lord. And I believe that one day, whenever I see Jesus, it’s going to be the greatest day of my life. And it’s not because of me. It’s because God told me one day, “I need you to understand that you’re a sinner. I need you to understand that we all do wrong, that you’ve done wrong. I need you to understand that Jesus Christ, that I sent my only Son to Earth to live a perfect life so that you could be saved by His sacrifice. And I need you to believe that three days after His sacrifice, He rose again, giving you the victory over death, hell, sin, and the grave. And I’m promising you that if you put your faith in that, that one day you’ll be reunited with your almighty God, you will see your Savior, and you will never be separated from Him for all of eternity.” And I had a choice to make in that moment. Just like I’m sure there’s one here who has that choice to make. I had to make the choice if I was going to put my faith in the unseen, or if I was only going to trust that which I could see. I’m so thankful, and I’ve never regretted, ever, putting my faith in Jesus Christ. There’s never been anything better that I could have ever done. Abraham’s faith teaches us three things. To follow God even when you can’t see the way, to trust God even when you haven’t received the promises, and to live for only– because God’s promises go far beyond this Earth. God’s promises does not and are not captured only here. My God is greater. My God has given me a heavenly promise, and He offers that same heavenly: promise to you today. Faith doesn’t mean that we can see how everything will work out. It means that we trust the one who has promised. Faith doesn’t mean that we have to live our lives in fear. Faith means I have the faith and a trust in the one who knows the past, knows the future, knows what tomorrow holds. I ask you a question. Are you living for only what you can see today,: or are you living by faith in what God has promised you for tomorrow?
Sometimes we get caught up in living for today. Sometimes that’s not wrong, live for today. Today’s all we have. But I’m more interested in tomorrow. I’m more interested in what God has for me. I’m more interested in knowing that when my eyes close in death, that God says in His Word, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.I believe it’s a moment. I believe it’s instant. I believe that as soon as a life ends, if you’ve trusted Jesus, you’re in the presence of God. What greater promise is that? There is no greater promise. There is nothing greater that you can hang your hat on than Jesus Christ. So I want to invite you today. Maybe your life doesn’t– It hasn’t planned out the way you think it should. Maybe you’re miserable. Maybe you’re: unsure of the things that are to come. Maybe you just don’t know. Maybe you have questions. Would you come? We’ll talk about it, me, Brother Ashton, or anybody else. We’ll tell you what God’s Word said, we’ll tell you God’s promises, and we’ll tell you how you can step into the promises of God because of what He did and because He loves you. Let’s all stand.
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