Abraham: The Father of the Faithful

Well, good morning, and I greet you in Jesus' name. About PowerPoint, I haven't had the courage or the know-how or anything, I guess, to do PowerPoint. I was a bit encouraged to hear Robbie Zacharias say he didn't think he could handle it either. And he said he's going to continue with his original experience with PowerPoint. He's going to trust God to give him the power to make the point.

So that'll probably continue to be my experience. But I admire everybody else who tries it.

It doesn't seem to quite be my cup of tea. Okay. I want to talk about Abraham this morning. You know that we started a little series called Men of Faith Who Built the Kingdom. And I had a talk about the kingdom, and then there was a baptismal message. And so now I'm coming back to that. And so this will be a series of biographical sketches. I want to do Abraham today.

And then, the Lord willing, I'd like to do Moses. And then I'd like to do Daniel. And then I'd like to do Peter. And I'd like to do Paul. I'd like to do those five. So I want to talk about Abraham. Abraham is referred to throughout the Scriptures as the father of the faithful, the man who established what it really means to have a faith relationship with God. Now, there are 280 references to Abraham in the Bible. That's a lot. There are 700, however, to Moses. But Abraham was before Moses. And Paul insists that God's promise to Abraham was not annulled by anything that Moses did. So we're really getting back to the basics. Romans 4:12 says that he is the father of all them that believe.

Now, a father is somebody who begins something that he gets the credit for being the originator. And so Abraham is a person we can look to to understand what it really means to have faith and to believe. Because there's a lot of questions today about what it means to believe. I talked to people on the phone. I talked to a man yesterday. And he had this idea that believing is something you do in your heart and in your mind. God knows it. And that's it. Once you believe, that takes care of everything. Okay.

Now, the thing we have to understand is that God made a covenant with Abraham. And I just want to I think there's a lot of confusion as to what a covenant is. So I just want to talk a little bit about what a covenant is. Because there are two words that sometimes we have in our minds, or at least the idea of it. And the one is a contract. And the other is a covenant.

What is the difference between the two? I think that today a lot of people have shifted their understanding of this word to this word. A contract is where two people agree to do something each agrees to do something. And whether that contract is fulfilled depends on whether both of them keep the promise they made. If one person breaks the promise, the contract is void.

A covenant is not that way. A covenant is a pledge. Okay? It's a perpetual promise. It has nothing to do with what the other person does. The person who makes a covenant binds himself to keep that covenant no matter what happens.

Okay? Now, when Abraham when God made his covenant with Abraham, the word covenant literally means cutting. That's literally what the word means. And you remember that when God made his covenant with Abraham, he told him to take a heifer and cut it in pieces and some pigeons and cut them in pieces and lay the pieces.

And then in those days, what would happen is each person who was involved in this covenant would walk between those pieces, and they both were promising to do something in relation to the other person that was not at all dependent on what that person did.

Okay? Now, in Abraham's case, it's very interesting because you would have assumed that Abraham was going to make a covenant with God and God was going to make a covenant with Abraham, and they'd both walk through those pieces. And the idea was that if you don't keep your covenant, you'll be dead like those animals. Death is what you were asking for if you didn't keep the covenant.

But Abraham never walked through that. He was asleep. Only God walked through those pieces. And God made a covenant to Abraham, and that covenant he refers to over and over again he would not break. It didn't matter what Abraham's people did. God would detastize them. He would bring trouble into their lives. He'd carry them into captivity. He would do all kinds of things to bring them to their responsibility, but he kept the covenant. He just kept working on that covenant.

And you know God makes a covenant with us. And we want to talk about now, you say, well, it's dependent on us. Well, that's not really quite the way it is. God makes a covenant with a certain kind of people. And then he keeps that covenant.

That person may have all kinds of problems. He may commit some sins. He may but as long as that person has committed himself to be a certain kind of person, God keeps his covenant to that person. And that's what's so wonderful about Abraham, that God made this covenant with him. All right?

Now, Abraham, what was the covenant? Well, turn to chapter 12, and we get started with this covenant to Abraham.

Chapter 12 of Genesis, verse 1. Now the well, I want to go I want to back up just a little bit. When people get married, I want to make sure I don't forget to say this. When people get married, they are making a covenant.

And one of the reasons I said that it tends to go to this rather than this is because that is what happens to many marriages. The other person's not keeping their part. In fact, they may be messing up pretty badly.

But the covenant still stands. You made a promise, and it was a covenant. It was not a contract. I never heard a marriage ceremony that sounded like a contract to me. It sounded like a promise that you would keep that no matter what happened in sickness and in health and prosperity and adversity and I can't quote all those vows. But you make a promise, and it's a covenant.

It's not a contract. Okay. So I just want you to understand what a covenant is. A covenant is a perpetual pledge that will not change no matter what the circumstances are. Okay? But God only enters into covenant with certain kinds of people. He didn't and they're into covenant with a lot of people. He in fact, it's only a very select group of people that God enters into covenant with. Okay? And when he sees certain qualities of character and that's what we're going to be looking at, then he keeps he has a covenant with those people. And he will work with them. They may have all kinds of problems, ups and downs and in yeah. But God sees there was something in that person's character and response that he can keep working on and keep his covenant.

And so he doesn't make the covenant unless he sees that kind of person. All right? So we're going to read the beginning of this covenant. Chapter 12, verse 1. Now, the Lord had said unto Abraham, "Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house unto a land that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation." God made a perpetual promise. This was he was going to do this no matter what happened. "I will make of you a great nation.

I will bless thee. I will make thy name great. And thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that curseth thee. And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." Now, that was quite a promise.

Many years passed before that promise actually got fulfilled. All right?

But you know God has committed himself to certain things. I've been impressed by N.T. Wright's concept that God started something in the Garden of Eden. And he's not going to abandon that. That's the kind of God we serve. Some people have the idea we're all going to die and go to heaven. We're just God's just going to abandon this whole project with the earth. Uh-uh.

You go to Revelation. It ends in 21 with the new earth and all these people it doesn't say, "Behold, the dwelling of God." It says, "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men." So it ends just exactly like it began. God does not abandon this. And that's why the kingdom of God is such an important concept of the Gospel because that is what God has covenanted himself to, to have a kingdom on this earth. Okay?

So it's important to analyze this morning. Are you the kind of person that God can make a covenant with? Because the Bible says his eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth, and he's marking. Where is the man that I can show myself strong in behalf of and that I can make a covenant with?

Now, Abraham is a very remarkable case. You must understand this man came from a heathen background. All of a sudden, this man appears that God can make a covenant with. He had no Scriptures. He had no biographies. He didn't hear any sermons by anybody that preached what we're going to talk about this morning.

He had no other examples except maybe his father and some of his brothers. We're not quite sure what all was going on in the family. But basically, he had no examples, and he had no accountability to anybody.

This man didn't have any of the advantages that we have. And all of a sudden, he steps out of raw paganism, and God can make a covenant with him.

What are the characteristics that God sees in a person that he's ready to make a covenant with? All right? Psalm 103:17 and 18 says, "But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him and his righteousness unto children's children, to such as keep his covenant and to those that remember his commandments to do them." All right. The first thing I want to notice, of course, is the outstanding thing about Abraham. He believed God. Now, that's repeated a number of times. Romans 4:3, Genesis 15:6, it's repeated that he believed God.

It says he believed in the Lord. If you turn over to chapter 15, it says in verse 6, "He believed in the Lord." All right?

And it says in Romans chapter 4 that if God can find a man who believes in him, that belief he will chalk that up as righteousness. But what does it mean to believe in the Lord? It means a person whose faith in God, though it may waver, never dies.

It doesn't matter what the circumstances are. You can depend that man's going to come out on the other side responding in trust and faith to God. He will not ever betray that trust even though he may fail in that trust.

The word believed isn't used in Romans chapter 11. I'm sorry, Romans chapter 4. It's used 11 times in that verse. It says I'm sorry. It's an accounting term. God put righteousness to Abraham's account because Abraham believed in him. All right?

Now, what does that mean? Well, I want to look a little bit at how Abraham responded to God. Genesis 26:5, when God was speaking to his son Isaac, he kept this covenant. He said, "Isaac, I'm going to keep this covenant. I made this covenant to your father because he has obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws."

That's what that's what his belief meant. That it didn't matter what the circumstances were, didn't matter what his understanding was, he did exactly what God told him. Never wavered from that. Now, the whole situation with Ishmael, he had been told that it would be his son. He wasn't told at that point that it would be Sarah's son.

And I'm not saying that Abraham did the right thing with Ishmael, but I don't think if Abraham had known that it was going to be Sarah's son, I'm not sure he'd have done what he did. I'm just giving that for what it's I'm trying to show you that Abraham was a person who always deferred to the will of God.

Okay?

And Romans 4:12 says, "Abraham" and people like to turn to this and talk about, you know, faith being something intellectual or the heart that you can't see. Well, it says when it gets done with that whole discussion, it says he's Abraham is the father of those who walk in the steps of that faith.

Did you get that? Faith is a walk. Faith are steps. Faith are things you can see in a man's decisions. You can you faith is visible. And he says, "God is the father of all those who walk like Abraham walked."

So let's look at that walk. What did it look like? Well, God told Abraham to get out of the land where he was and go to another just start out. He didn't tell him where he was going. He says, "Abraham, start moving. And I'll show you as you're on the way. I'll show you."

Would you have done that? That's the kind of person Abraham was. He promised him a land. Abraham never owned any part of that land except a little burial plot. That's all he ever learned owned. But he believed that.

He trusted God. He told him his seed would be as the stars and as the sand. Abraham only ever saw two sons and two grandsons. That's all he ever saw. It was going to be several hundred years before that promise became visible.

And then he told him to take the son and we've talked about this before. I don't want to spend a lot of time on it. Take the son, the son upon whom all the promises depended, and sacrifice him.

And Abraham, it says he was up early in the morning on his way. God told him at one point to do a circumcision as the sign of this covenant. Well, we all know what that is.

He had 312 men in his house. We know that because that was the army he took after Lot. And it says the very well, let's turn to that. Would you turn to verse chapter 17?

Verse 22. "And he left off talking with him, and God went up from Abraham, and Abraham took Ishmael, his son, and all that were born in his house and all that were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house, and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the self-same day."

Well, that was a pretty major situation. I mean, I think I'd had to thought about that for a while. And then all the men in his house shows you the kind of respect and influence and authority this man wielded over his household. That's the kind of man he was. Take your son. He's up the next morning. Circumcise everybody in your house, 300 some people, does it the same day.

That's Abraham. We're saying God knew that he was this kind of man. That's the kind of person he makes a covenant with. I'm going to have to be honest with you. I see a lot of wishy-washy characters.

Do you expect God to make a covenant with you if you're here one day and there the next? If you're up one day and down the next? And I'm not talking about fluctuation. I'm talking about blatant disobedience. Blatant rejection of what God has clearly said.

Questionable activities just barge right ahead. God's going to make a covenant with you? That's not the kind of person Abraham was. Abraham fully obeyed what he understood when God talked to him. He said when he took his son up there on the mountain, he said, "I and the lad will go yonder and worship." And you all know what I believe worship is. We're going to go there, and we're going to put God number one.

Everything else is going to go on that altar.

Abraham, like I said, never saw the fulfillment, especially if you go through this covenant, we really should take time. Well, I'll just do it for you. We had the first part of the covenant. He's going to make him a great nation.

He's going to bless everyone who blesses him. Then in 13:14 to 18, you can mark these down and look at them later. You can look at them now. He promises him all the land that he can see. And his children will be as the seed as the sand of the sea. That's that he keeps enlarging this promise. In 15:18 to 20, he says, "Your boundaries will be..." and he gives him the boundaries of the land. First, he said, you know, all this land you can see. Now he gives him boundaries. It's way over at the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea to the I forget where it is on the north and on the south.

But he tells him and it's a huge piece of land.

Then in 17, he says, "I'm going to make of your family many nations." And then in verses 20 chapter 22, verses 16 and 18, he says, "You will possess the gates of your enemies." I mean, these they become increasingly dazzling as you go. And Abraham saw almost none of this. But God was able to make those kinds of promises based on this character that we're talking about this morning. That God knew that sooner or later, Abraham would do exactly what God wanted him to do, and he would persist in that the whole way to the end of his life.

All right. We sing the song "Trust and Obey." If you don't obey, you have proven you do not really believe in God.

All right. That's I like that song. That puts it all in three words: trust and obey. If you don't obey, you don't trust. Don't tell me that you believe in God like Abraham did at least if you don't obey.

And if yeah, those two go together. All right. So that's the point we want to make. That Abraham believed in God. That meant something. That wasn't just some mushy term that we throw around. I believe in God. I mean, it's a man who's up early in the morning doing impossible things. It's a man who immediately gets about God's will no matter what it costs.

It's a man who God can depend on that that's what's going to happen. And if he sees that kind of person, he enters into a covenant with them. All right? There's a little bit of a point here to eternal security, but it's not what most people teach.

God has to see this kind of person. All right. When people ask me if I believe in eternal security, my standard answer is I don't believe in eternal insecurity.

All right. The second thing we want to notice here is Abraham was a prophet. Okay? People who respond this way have a prophetic concept of life. Genesis 20:7 says, "He said to Pharaoh, 'You go talk to Abraham. He's a prophet. And he'll pray for you, and he'll take care of this situation.'" Now, you have to understand that Noah died if you check this out chronologically, Noah died two years before Abraham was born.

Shem, his son, died 150 years later. Now, we said Abraham had no scriptures. I can't believe that Abraham did not hear the story of Noah who God also made a covenant with.

What I'm getting at is a prophet prophets from what he knows of God, from his experience, and what others have told him. All right? Abraham, I believe, had been told the story of the flood. In fact, there maybe even was still some evidence of it around. Like I said, Noah died. Of course, Noah was 900 some years old, I think, when he died. He died two years before him, before he was born. And then his son Shem was living who would have experienced the flood.

So I think Abraham, a little bit like Joseph, Joseph was able to hear the story of Isaac. If you study the chronology, when Jacob came back from Padanarum, Isaac was still living. And Joseph would have heard firsthand that story of Isaac being put on that altar and whatever other stories he would have gotten from the former patriarchs. What I'm trying to get at is people who God makes covenant with are people who take very seriously the story of God's work up until their time. And they learn from it. And they treasure it. And they keep it. And it gives them a broad perspective of God.

I like the story of Caleb and Joshua. You've heard me tell this story before. They go into the land with the spies. They all see the same thing.

And they come back. Ten of them badmouth the land. They all say the one thing they do say, "It's a good land." And then the other ten say there are giants in that land, and they're all dying. There's something wrong there. If we go in there, we're going to die. And Joshua, Caleb said, "Look, yeah, of course they're dying.

Because God's preparing the land for us." Now, why were they able to say that? Because they believed the promise that they were to take the land. The others didn't believe it. Or they would have seen what they saw through the eyes of that promise God made to them.

Abraham was that kind of person. Abraham was the kind of person that could see what other people could not see.

He grasped the truth that was handed to him and refused to let it go.

Philippians 3:16 says, "Whereunto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule." Let's not let it go. Whatever we have acquired, whatever we have been able to see, whatever God has shown to us, whatever experience has been handed to us, don't let it go.

Walk in it.

And Abraham, because of this tremendous ability to see, saw some things that most people never saw. First of all, he was the first person in the scriptures to see the resurrection.

Because he obeyed God, God drove him into such a corner that his logic had to bring him to the conclusion that there'd be a resurrection long before anybody else saw it. And what was that? Well, God had said, "This son is going to be the means by which I'm going to make your name great. This is the promised son.

Now you put him to death." The only way Abraham could reason that out, and we're told this, that God was able to raise him from the dead. But Abraham only saw that because he allowed God to drive him into a corner by his radical obedience.

People who radically obey God come into circumstances that teach them things about God that nobody else learns unless they are willing to go through those kinds of experiences. Job's another one. Job was faithful to God. And yet he kept having all this trouble. And it looked like he was going to die without justice.

And so he reasoned, "I believe God is a God of justice. If I die without justice, it means only one thing: that there will be a life after death." What I'm telling you is people like Abraham who are willing to obey God are brought into circumstances like Job and like Abraham in which they are forced to see what nobody else can see.

And even though the experience is a daunting experience, that is a tremendous blessing.

So Abraham was a prophet.

The third thing we see is that Abraham was a friend of God.

Now, all of us say God is our friend. But the question is, are we God's friend? I'm I got that wrong. Yes, are we God's friend? Does God delight in us? Is He intimate with us? Is He blessed with us? He was with Abraham.

In fact, God said, "I can't hide anything from this man. He's my good friend.

He's my good friend." When God was with Abraham, He was blessed. God was blessed living with Abraham. All right? When Abraham offered Him food, remember the angels came? And then it says they went down to Sodom, and Abraham stood still before the Lord. I think that was Jesus.

Abraham had invited these people in, and they had eaten His food. God had eaten Abraham's food. Now, when Samson's parents brought food out, it was burned as a sacrifice. But God ate the food of Abraham. And that when you ate food with somebody in the Old Testament, that really meant something.

That meant that you were a really, really faithful friend of that person. And God took Abram's food. When God spoke, Abraham always heard.

When Abraham spoke, God always heard. That's the kind of relationship they had. When he comes into the land, first thing he does is build an altar to check him. Then he keeps going toward the south, and he builds a whole series of altars. When he came back from Egypt, he went right back to one of those altars. I mean, that was Abraham.

And God was if there was one person on the whole earth that God said, "I want to go down and be with that person for a while," it was Abraham. He loved to be with Abraham. I ask you, God makes covenants with people who He enjoys being with.

He's blessed when He's with those people. He goes with them to town, and He's blessed. He gets with them in their car, and He's blessed. He God's blessed when He's with this person. I think there are a lot of people who want to say they're people of faith who God has grieved with most of the time.

It's not a blessing at all for Him to be with them. They're just constantly violating the most precious things that He would like to see expressed.

Well, you all know the story of Sodom. And the next thing I want to talk about is Abraham was an effective intercessor. He stood between judgment and Sodom. He wasn't able to keep it from happening, but he almost he almost succeeded in keeping Sodom from being destroyed.

And finally, he stood between Lot and judgment. And it's just it's amazing to hear Abraham pray this prayer to God. He says, "Surely you will not destroy the wicked with the righteous with the wicked." And then it when I read this, I always think Abraham was testing God's mercy. "God, will You do it for 50? God, will You save it for 40? What about 30? What about 20? One more time, God, 10."

That's the kind of relationship he had with God. I think God loved it to have this man test out just how far His mercy would go.

He pled for Ishmael. And a lot of people aren't aware of it, but God made tremendous promises to Ishmael. He blessed Ishmael because of Abraham. He pled for Abinamelec. He pled for Pharaoh. And God blessed these people because of this man that He'd made a covenant with. He had great power with God to secure blessings for others, even people who were wicked.

Well, number six, the next I think it's number five. Abraham was a generous lover of people. He was a people person. If somebody says, "Well, he's just not a people person," I don't know about that. God makes covenants with people like Abraham.

He saved Lot twice.

He gave tithes to Melchizedek when actually Melchizedek owed him money. He refused to take anything from the king of Sodom. He ran to serve his guests. He was a people person.

And finally, Abraham left a legacy to all his posterity. Genesis 18:18, it says, "All the nations shall be blessed because of Abraham." Imagine that you're the means by which God blesses the whole world. Exodus 2:24, God heard the groaning of the people in Egypt because of Abraham.

2 Kings 13:23, "Israel was oppressed by Haziel, king of Syria, all the days of Jehoahaz." And Jehoahaz was a wicked king. "But God had compassion and respect unto Israel and brought deliverance because of Abraham." You can go back and read it. It's always because of Abraham.

And Luke 1:73, Zechariah bases his wonderful song that he sings because he believes that this covenant to Abraham is still standing.

So let me just quickly go through these. God makes covenant with people who believe in Him. And the belief is a walk that you can see, that God is number one the whole way through in the decisions that are made.

Number two, God makes covenants with people who are prophets who allow themselves God is always calling us to see and to hear. And He makes covenants with people whose eyes are open, whose ears are open. They take it all in. And they profit from all of it, and they live by it.

And they see a big picture nobody else sees. They make decisions that are timeless. Abraham was a friend of God. God could go with Abraham everywhere and be blessed because Abraham's life was a blessing to him.

Number four, Abraham was an effective intercessor. He had great power with God because of this. Number five, Abraham was a lover of people. He was a generous person with people. And number six, Abraham left a legacy to all his posterity.

I ask you, are you willing to walk in the steps of this great man with these characteristics? Shall we bow our heads for prayer? Our Father, we thank You this morning for this man. Your covenant with him was not an eeny, meeny, minimode choice.

Your eyes had searched the whole earth, and You found a man that You could totally depend upon who would be an intimate companion, who would see what You see, would hear what You hear, would trust You absolutely even though he never saw most of the promises.

And yet we know they were fulfilled. Oh God, help us to understand that You will only make a covenant with us if we have that kind of character, if we are truly men of faith. In Jesus' name, amen.