Well, good morning. It’s good to be with you.
Still taking a break from Matthew’s Gospel. We’ll get back into that in a couple weeks. I want to say I was very grateful for Chase preaching the Word last week. He did a great job and that was a blessing. And Richard will be preaching for us next week, not to make him nervous more than he needs, but he will be, so that will be good as well. So I’m very thankful for those guys for preaching the Word to us. We’re going to be in Hebrews this morning, Hebrews chapter 11. If you have your Bibles, I’d encourage you to turn with me to Hebrews chapter 11.
And we’ll be in verses 8 through 16.
Hebrews chapter 11, verses 8 through 16.
And it says, By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called out to go to a place that he was to receive, as an inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in a land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations,
whose designer and builder is God. By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive. Even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful, who had promised. Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven, as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on earth. For people who speak, with us make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.
If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city.
I’ve read recently the account of William Bradford and all the Puritans who came to America. And of course we popularize this in America. You see cartoons and remakes of the pilgrims coming and they’re hanging out with the Indians and there’s a lot of food everywhere and it’s all smiles. And that’s really not the case at all. It’s really not a romantic thing. The Puritans in England at the time, they were heavily persecuted by the Church of England for their beliefs. John Bunyan, a very popular Puritan, was thrown in prison for over 12 years. For holding a church meeting in his house without the government’s permission. And sitting in prison for 12 years, John Bunyan says, I know that I bring down the roof on my own family for doing this. And his family was impoverished those many years. Because he believed what he believed and he would not recant it. And the Puritans moved on to Holland, so they exiled themselves from their home in England, the place they loved. They lived in great poverty in Holland for over 10 years. And then when that became an impossible place to live, many of them took the boat, boat ride to America. And that first winter, over half of them died. And the ones who did live, they lived in great, great poverty and starvation for a long time before they could be established. So it’s not as romantic as I think we can make it sound sometimes in history. It was a very, very painful, strenuous trial for these people. But why would they do that? Why would you sit in prison that long, knowing your family is impoverished? Why would you exile yourself from the land you love? It’s because they had faith. Faith.
And they believed. And they believed enough that they were willing to suffer in the moment to get to a certain outcome in it. And everyone has faith. I think even someone that claimed to be an atheist, he may say he has no faith in God, but he has faith in some belief system, something that navigates his life for him. We all believe in something. It’s a question of what you believe, why do you believe that, and what’s the outcome of your life going to be because of that faith you hold? And in the book of Hebrews, the writer, we don’t know who wrote Hebrews, but the writer’s writing these Jewish Christians, and they’re at the point of falling away from the faith. They’re undergoing severe social persecution, and they’re at the point of saying, let’s just go back to Judaism. It’s a lot easier. It’s a lot easier. But he says, don’t do that. Your faith is real, and the outcome of your faith, it will produce a fruit for you that nothing else will. So that’s the question I want to ask you. I want us to consider this morning as we look at here,
Abraham and Sarah, as the Hebrew writer recalls them. Where does living by faith lead us? What’s going to be the outcome of that?
I want to look back at Genesis chapter 12, verse 1 through 5 with you.
In Genesis 12, it says, Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
So Abraham’s 75 years old. So if you’re 75, you know what 75 feels like. To pick on my dad, he’s in his 50s and he’s always complaining to me about gout and this joint hurts and my vision’s not as good as it used to be. So you’re probably not looking at 55, much less 75, of starting this brand new life somewhere else. You’re probably just not. And there’s no airplanes, there’s no cars and trains. You’re getting on the back of some animal and taking this bumpy ride miles and miles and miles away.
And Abraham lived in, in Ur. And Ur was an established city. It was a commercial thriving port. For its time, we know from excavations, it was technologically advanced. So this is a big city. It’s got a great location on the Euphrates River. It would have been a busy port. This is where Abraham lives. And Abraham’s not a poor man. He has a lot. He has a very comfortable, secure life. Yet God says, Abraham, I want you to go to Canaan, which is a tribal, a very underdeveloped land. But not only does God say to Abraham, Abraham, I want you to leave your country. He says to Abraham, Abraham, I want you to leave your father’s house.
Now, in our modern world, most people move away as soon as they can when they graduate high school. You go to college, you move across town, you move across country, across the world. It’s just not normal in our society to stay with your parents, certainly not live with them. I have a good friend from Ghana, a country in West Africa. And he told me the first thing that really amazed him about America was that families don’t stay together. They break up. Where he’s from, you got married, you built a room onto your father’s house, and you added to your father’s house. And here’s why. In the ancient world that Abraham lived, your father’s house was largely your identity. It was belonging. So you see what God’s saying to Abraham. You’re not just going to leave your country. I want you to leave behind, your identity.
It wouldn’t have been an easy thing to do for him. There is in this for Abram and Sarah an unknown safety factor. Soon after he does leave, he has to put a small army together to rescue his nephew Lot. And then on top of it all, Abraham never actually in his life gets to inherit the land. He will live as a nomad on the land that he will not actually receive in his lifetime. His descendants will. So you see how Abraham, how this is not much like the Puritans. This is not this romantic, nostalgic story. And you can see Abraham and Sarah riding out to the sunset, going to Canaan, obeying God. This is illogical. This is impractical. I think by a lot of people’s standards, it is irresponsible and reckless to do this. Yet he goes. And why does Abraham go? He goes because God told him to go. He took God at His word and he had faith. So friends, if we’re going to live by faith, the first thing we must do is go when God says go. And I think there’s got to be a willingness on our part
to look like a fool if God doesn’t show up. And when I say fool, I don’t mean actually fool as God sees it, but foolish as the world sees it. Foolish as man thinks. Foolish as man thinks. There’s seven reasons. Perhaps you could call it a disregard for dignity, right? No one likes looking like a dupe. No one likes being embarrassed. We like to be thought well of others. Yet seasons in life come for us as Christians, if we’re truly Christians, where God’s going to say, I want you to step out in this situation and I want you to do something that’s going to require my power and my provision. And if I don’t come through, nothing’s going to work out. Hey, I want you to go say that thing to that person. I don’t want to say that thing to that person. You need to go say, I don’t want to say that thing to that person. Go share the gospel with that God at work. Oh, what if it’s awkward? What if it’s so weird?
I want you to go to that place for me. Hey, I want you to give this away. Hey, I want you to do this thing for me. And what do you call that? The thing that determines what you say, what you do, where you go with your life. We call it control. And everyone likes to be in control of their own life, don’t we? Everyone likes to be told what to do. But God says, if I’m your God, guess what? I’m in control. Jesus says, I am the Lord of your life. So friends, against good logic and reason, when God says go,
practicality, comfort, safety, security, dignity, these are distant memories of a meaningless life we no longer live. Because God has employed us in His service. He’s called us His very own. And if we are His, you know what it means? It means, really and truly if we’re His, not in word, but in deed, if we’re His, there’s this underlying belief and sureness in my heart that the work God’s doing in and through me, I never could have thought that work up, first of all. And second of all, I don’t have the power and provision to do it. If I had the power and provision to do it, you know what? God probably didn’t call me to it. Abraham and Sarah, what do you think about this? They’re not special people at all. They’re random people from a random place. They’re pagan polytheists like everyone else of their time. They weren’t special. They weren’t specially trained to pioneer some new life. They weren’t spiritual gurus that had some special access to God. They were just people and God came to them and He spoke His Word and they went because they simply took God at His Word. They found God to be trustworthy. And so friends, when we go, we’re declaring with the whole of ourselves, with every fiber of our being, that God is trustworthy. And the outcomes of every situation, that’s part of God’s sovereign purpose. God has already willed, what’s going to happen. The psalmist says, Lord, your times are in my hands. I’m always believing whatever’s happening, it’s happening because God’s letting it happen. And additionally, I can know God’s good. So whatever’s happening, it’s God’s goodwill towards me. Even if there’s suffering and pain and confusion, God has willed that for my good. And that sounds kind of like, well, that sounds stupid. If God loves you, why does He will bad things for you? Because He’s working for my good. And the Apostle James explains it really well. James 1, verse 2, and we looked at this in our Bible study this past week. James writes, and he says,
So James says, hey, when God tests your faith, what He’s doing is He’s purifying it. He’s making you more of a steadfast person. And when God makes, He’s more steadfast than who He is. You know what He’s doing? He’s growing you up. He’s preparing you. He’s readying you, not for the temporal moment that’s painful, but for something better that’s going to come. So the Scriptures turn that whole thing on its head. I don’t want to run from these problems. I hope God never asks me to do anything. I hope God never says for me to go to this place or do this crazy thing I don’t want to do. But you’re essentially asking God to not grow you. God, just let me be who I am. I don’t want to grow. I don’t want to know you more. The Scriptures say we must follow Christ and suffer. As He suffered and through suffering like Christ, we’re made pure and we’re made complete. We’re made steadfast for that eternal country that God has prepared for us. Though God would have us walk down roads we never would choose for ourselves, though there may be incredible hurt in the moment, every time we can look back and see beauty in the brokenness, see triumph in the defeat, how God was leading us through very dark, scary places, but He did it because He loved us. He loved us. And He’s deepening our faith. You know, the Scriptures say faith is the eye of the soul. So you see, if God’s given me a greater faith, that must mean He’s given my heart, my soul, a greater clarity to see Him. So when I have a greater faith, I can see the glory of God and I can see the goodness of God more and more. And the more I see God, the more I want to know God and the more the Spirit is making me into the image of Christ.
And I think we had to solidify this down to one point. Statement. What would that be? It would be this. What are your priorities? What are your values in life? Because what you prioritize or value, I guess you could just say it the way Jesus says it, what you love, your loves are going to motivate
and navigate who you are and what you do. So I think there is that question. How much do you value your safety? Safety of your family. That’s a hard one for me. How much weight and stock do you put in your ability to reason, to navigate every situation? I’ve got to have the answers. I’ve got to be in control. I’m saying what I’m doing. What about financial security? What about the praises and approval of people around you? What about, and here’s a tough one for us as Americans, what about your personal time and schedule? We all love to say, oh, I’m just too busy. Oh, I’m just too busy. God’s going to say, you better cut that out and get busy about my work a lot of times.
Ten out of ten times. Ten out of ten times when God calls you to do something for Him, He’s going to ask you to sacrifice yourself on the altar of faith. No questions about that. So friends, there does remain for us the unknown, sometimes confusion of what God calls us to, but there is this surety. It’s His hand that’s paving the whole way. And His presence is with us and abiding every single step of the way to lead us to a better place that He’s calling us to go.
I talked about Elizabeth Elliot a few weeks ago, wife of Jim Elliot, and when her husband was martyred, she lived with those Indians that killed her husband.
But I was mindful this week of a very famous quote that her husband Jim Elliot once said before he was martyred. He says, He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot live. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.
What matters most? I think Abraham and Sarah had to ask themselves that question. What matters most to me? Is it Christ? Is it His kingdom? Is it temporal? Is it passing away? Or do I have my eyes on God’s kingdom and doing the work now He’s called me to do? Obeying, obeying in the hardest parts because our praise to God, our love for God, it’s not worth very much on the mountaintop if we cannot do it in the valley just as well. And I’ll say this to us. Are we listening? It’s really difficult to hear when you don’t listen. Dawson proves that to be true so many times. I can say so much to him, but can he hear me? Oftentimes,
not, right?
A couple weeks ago, I was across the street and I was talking to my neighbors and I saw him come and I said, Dawson, don’t do it. Dawson, don’t do it. And he heard me, but he didn’t hear me, if you know what I mean. He heard me, but he didn’t hear me. And he came across that street and he got in trouble because he didn’t hear me. And friends, so much we can get so tied up in my life and I’m tied up in the good things still. I’m tied up in family. I’m tied up in work. And I’m going here and I’m doing there. And you’re just autopiloting life and you’re not giving, you’re not giving the Spirit and the Word a chance to really say, hey, I want you to start this work for me. Hey, I want you to fund this thing for me. Hey, you need to build that relationship. Hey, are you doing this? Are you listening? You know, Jesus was God, you know, and it says, Jesus would get up every morning before everybody else woke up, it was dark. And you got to a desolate place where no one was. And he would listen to the Father. He would listen. Listen. Are we listening so that we know to go when God says go?
Where does living by faith
lead us? If you look back at verse 11 in chapter 11 of Hebrews, it says, By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful, who had promised.
Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven, and as many as the innumerable grains of sand
by the seashore.
Genesis chapter 15, it says this, it says, After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram, I am your shield, your reward shall be very great. But Abram said, O Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus. It was his servant. And Abram said, Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, This man shall not be your heir, your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them. Then he said to him, So shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. So, Abraham is much older, he’s getting older, Sarah’s getting older, but God says, Hey, just trust me, it’s going to happen. But ten years passed by, ten years. Look at Genesis 16. Now Sarah, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar, and Sarah said to Abram, Behold now, the Lord has prevented. You hear that? The Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go into my servant, and maybe that I shall obtain children by her. And Abram listened to the voice of Sarah. So after Abraham had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarah, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram, her husband, as a wife. And he went into Hagar, and she conceived. And when she, that’s Hagar, saw that she conceived, she looked with contempt on Sarah. So ten years later, Abraham’s 80 years old, Hagar’s 75, Sarah’s 75, this looks grim.
You can’t blame her. She sees the improbability here. She sees the impossibility. And Sarah even says, God’s the one that’s preventing us from having a kid. So she takes matters into our own hands. She gives her servant, Hagar, to Abraham, and she gets pregnant, and she’ll raise up this child. It’ll be her kid, right?
Was this an acceptable custom of the day?
Yeah, I guess perhaps it was. But was it what God told them to do? Absolutely not. And it creates a world of heartache and trouble for them. It ruins Hagar and Sarah’s relationship. Abraham has to send Hagar away. And now Abram has this son on his hands. I want you to look 14 years later, Genesis 7, verse 15.
And God said to Abraham, As for Sarah your wife, you shall not call her name Sarah, but Sarah shall be her name, and I will bless her. And moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations. Kings of people shall come from her. Then Abram fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child? And Abraham said to God, Oh, that Ishmael might live before you.
God said, No. But Sarah, your wife, shall bear you a son. And you shall call his name Isaac, and I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him.
So Abraham says, God, let’s do it my way. Let’s make so much sense. Look at this 14-year-old boy. He’s a good-looking boy here. Let’s just let him be the heir. Let’s go with this. It’s right here. And God says, No. This wasn’t my timing. This wasn’t my timing. This wasn’t my way at all. God has a plan. God has the timing and purpose of that plan, and He means to keep His promise.
I want you to see Genesis chapter 21, the last one here. It says, The Lord visited Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as He had promised. And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. And Abraham called the name of his son, who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him. I think it’s important the writer really emphasizes that. Sarah bore him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. And Sarah said, God has made laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh over me. And she said, Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son, in, his, old, age. So it came God’s way,
in God’s timing. And because it came God’s way in God’s timing, you know what it gave Abraham and Sarah? It gave them a joy they never would have had otherwise. It would have been a cheaper joy.
It would have been a cheaper life that God had intended though much more for them.
Friends, if we already live by faith, we must go when God says go. But we also must do this. We must wait when God says wait. And waiting oftentimes can be harder than going. Because in seasons of waiting, you know what we are? We’re prone to doubt, like Abraham and Sarah. We’re prone to have lapses in faith. Our hopes of what could be, our hopes of what should be, even God-given dreams, they begin to erode, they decay, because God’s not letting it come to pass the way I want it to. The way I want and when I want. Here’s this control issue creeping back in, isn’t it? The more we take trust and counsel from our own preferences about what God should be doing and when He should be doing it, the more likely we are to take action to our own hands and run counter to what God desires for us. We rob God, or we try to rob God, of blessing us. Yet it won’t be God’s blessing, friends. So there’s a real temptation and danger then in this. Finding your identity in something that God may give you or something you hope God may call you to. If God calls you to something, He gives you a dream to do a ministry for Him, or you’re praying for something big to come to pass or something you want, is it innately a bad thing? No.
But here’s the thing. God had called Abraham and Sarah to find their identity in God, not in the things that God gives. And we have that same danger every time. Every time to find our identity in what we’re doing for God, not finding our identity in God Himself. Life becomes about what we do for God, not who we’re becoming in Jesus. But here’s the thing. In poverty or riches, doing great things for God, great exploits for the kingdom, or seemingly sitting at home not doing anything, all the same, you know what the poor man and the rich man, the great man and the not great man can do alike? Have God. Know God. Know God. Be changed by God. It’s not until we truly know God and we know Him and we’re satisfied in Him, are we ready then to receive blessings from Him and do great things for Him. And you know what it is? It’s painful to say this to ourselves and we have to say it to ourselves all the time. God doesn’t actually need me. And God doesn’t need you.
God can do whatever He wants, whenever He wants. He’s the God of heaven and earth and He does as the Scriptures say, He does as He pleases. He does as He pleases. He’ll use us sometimes. So friends, the great joy in life is discovering God. Not the stuff God has created, not the stuff God calls us to do. Those are blessings to see as having come from God once we’ve found our full purpose in Him alone.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism, its first question is this, and this is the most popular question of the catechisms, all of them. What is the chief end of man? It is to go to God. It is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That’s the chief end. That is the chief purpose of man. It doesn’t say to glorify God and enjoy stuff that God makes forever. To enjoy doing things for God. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. So God’s offering to us in the waiting a perfect peace, a perfect satisfaction because we always in the Spirit have Christ. We’re always filled up. God isn’t cutting you short if you think you’re going to die. You think you should have something. You think you should be doing something. God says you need to keep waiting. Why? I don’t have to tell you why. Just wait.
Christ is present in that moment. Christ is refining me in that present. Christ is readying me for something better in that moment. Christ is reminding me my identity is in who He is. My identity is in what Jesus has done, not who I can be and what I can do for God because who I am and what I can do for God, it amounts to nothing. But when Christ becomes my all in all, then I can do for God. Then I am prepared by grace to do things and receive things from the Lord. And I want to be sure to say this so we’re clear. Sometimes in life, and this is just a painful reality, sometimes in life, waiting ends in waiting.
Not every time does that sick person we’re praying for get better. Not every time we think God’s called us to some great ministry does it work out. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out. Is God unfaithful? Is God powerless? Is He cruel? Is He cruel to have me wait? No. Was He not with you in the waiting? Was He not refining you in the waiting? See, the proof of whether or not you were waiting right, you were waiting because you were trusting in God, you were growing in patience, you were believing more in Jesus, the proof you weren’t doing that is because at the end of the waiting, you say, well, forget God. He didn’t come through the way I wanted Him to. He didn’t act like my genie in the bottle. But God’s not our genie in the bottle. God is our God and we submit to Him whatever He brings our way in the waiting for us. We’re friends and in the going despite the outcome. Despite the outcome.
And on the opposite side of Jim Elliott, when I was doing my missions class at Moody, I had to read a book of all these martyrs. And the first martyr was a lady named Bonnie Witherell. And she was martyred in, I think, 2001.
But reading her account, it was very different from Jim Elliott’s. She went to school. She was so sure that she was going to be a missionary. Yet her and her husband, they would find a ministry opportunity overseas and they’d find this ministry opportunity and everyone would fall through and everyone would fall through. And she kept time and time again getting so frustrated and so angry and so aggravated because she thought God was calling her to all this stuff and it wasn’t happening. But she wrote this in her journal. She wrote that she realized this is what the Lord was saying to her. I have not called you to a place. I have called you to myself.
I have not called you to a place. I have called you to myself. Whatever the Lord puts us, whatever the Lord ends up giving us, nonetheless, God only and ultimately has called us to find life, to find satisfaction in knowing Jesus alone. And that’s it. So we can say in any season of life, blessed be the name of the Lord.
Friends, we live in an age of emotion. People do not make decisions based off of what’s right and what’s wrong. We don’t live in an age of emotion. We don’t live in an age where people make decisions based off of morality even. We live in an age of feelings, of emotions, of experience told me it was right. It must be right. It felt that way. It must be good. Mindful of John Locke, the philosopher, he said if you live that way though, when you go paddling in a canoe, you stick a paddle in the water and it looks like it bends the way the water refracts. He said so experience would tell me when you put paddle in water, they bend. They bend. Of course they don’t. Sometimes experience, sometimes our feelings, they mislead us. What we’ve got to constantly do is go back to the Word of God and say my emotions, my feelings, my desires must be, must be subject to my Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.
We live in an age of productivity. We measure success in terms of what we get done. What can you get done? Do more. Do more. Do more. And more and more articles, secular articles come out to say, as a people, as a nation, as a society, we’re exhausted. We’re literally working ourselves to death. We have no idea how to rest. But in God’s kingdom, success is measured in terms of faith. It’s measured in terms of trust. It’s measured in terms of obedience.
Obedience.
And I think to put it in a phrase, of course I didn’t come up with this phrase, but it’s a good one. God is not ultimately concerned with our happiness in this life. God is ultimately concerned with our holiness. God’s making us holy. He’s preparing us for something far better. He’s preparing us for joy. And joy is like happiness, but it’s unbreakable and it can’t change because it’s rooted in something that can’t change. What can’t change? Just God. Just God. Are you desiring for God to make you holy, not happy?
Verse 13 in chapter 11.
It says, As these all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth, for people who speak thus make it clear, they’re seeking a homeland. And if they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country. That is, a better country. That is, a better country. A heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city. Friends, when God says go, we can go because we know He’s with us in every moment of confusion. He’s with us in power and provision when it’s scary, when it’s difficult, when it’s dark. He’s promised that. When God’s told us to wait, we can sit still and trust that He is working. He’s doing more things than we can see. And we can just trust and rely on His character.
Living by faith, where does it lead us? It leads us all the way home.
And I think one of the greatest things about Abraham that could be said is what Jesus said in John chapter 8. Speaking to the crowds and the Pharisees, Jesus said in John 8, 56, Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see My day. He saw it and was glad.
Abraham rejoiced to see Christ’s day and he saw it.
He was glad. Abraham didn’t live for the moment because he knew that this whole thing about Canaan and the land and a descendant, it wasn’t about the temporal moment of just getting that land and having a family. It was about so much more. Abraham knew. He didn’t have all the clarity on it, but he knew through his line somebody would come. And this somebody would come and this somebody would make a way for us to have an eternal, permanent home with God in heaven. So, like Abraham, you know what we can do? We can suffer.
We can let the fleeting pleasures of this life pass us by in these moments. We can wait. We can wait on God because Christ has already done all things well. Christ has lived. Christ has suffered and died. And Christ has been raised to new life. And the Scriptures say we believe and trust in that Jesus and we follow that Jesus and we do what that Jesus tells us to do and going and waiting and everything else. It’s going to hurt and it’s going to be challenging, but following that Jesus will lead us all the way home.
That’s what Abraham did. That’s what Sarah did. And that’s the invitation that Jesus gives to us this morning is to believe and trust in His life. The Scriptures say the Spirit would put the life of Jesus in us so that we too could follow in faith and follow and have the power and provision of God with us all along the way.
So let’s pray.