Hebrews Lesson
179
November 12,
2009
NKJ Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to
my feet And a light to my path.
I’m already
hearing somebody thinking (The Ukraine is shut down not because of the swine
flu – they’ve only had about (I don’t know) four or five hundred
documented cases of the swine flu, but the regular flu.), “So how in the
world can Robby go over there? He’ll come back sick.”
I’ve had my flu
shot, thank you. I’m immune. God’s going to protect me. I come back
with the flu every year anyway so why should this year be
different? Actually I didn’t last year.
All right, open
your Bibles to Hebrews 11 and we will of briefly touch base here on our focal
point. Hebrews 11 is dealing with the evidences and evidence of faith in
terms of people's lives – evidence of faith in terms of people's lives
that faith is the evidence of things not seen, the substance of things hoped
for, the evidence of things not seen, Hebrews 11:1. So we see that
evidence in terms of how people lived, how their lives changed, how at key
points in their life they had the choice to trust God or not. So it’s
these episodes that are being brought out in Hebrews 11 because it is through
their response to God's Word that they pressed forward in terms of their spiritual
growth; but also because of the impact of these individuals and their faith in
the history of Israel and God's plan and purpose for Israel so that it became a
testimony before the angels, a testimony before men and a key testimony in
history to God's faithfulness.
So the event that
we looked at last time focused on Hebrews 11:8.
NKJ Hebrews 11:8 By faith Abraham
obeyed
When you trust
God or you believe something is true, you simply act as if it is
true. That’s obedience. If you believe that God says do this or don't
do this and you follow suit; then that is because you believe it is true and
you're acting as if it is true. That is obedience.
when he was called to go out
to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not
knowing where he was going.
We focused last
time as well on the connection of those words (heir, inheritance, promise)
focusing on future fulfillment of a promise that had been made by God and as
well as their future possession (That's that idea of inheritance) and trace
that through in a summary review of the Doctrine of the Inheritance.
So Abraham lived
his life as well and as did Isaac and Jacob without owning any land other that
the cave at Machpelah, which is where Abraham and Sarah were buried. They
did not own any land in the land that God promised them. But they were
looking forward to that ultimate fulfillment.
The reference
here is to the call in Genesis 12 that Abraham obeyed when he was called to go
out, to leave his comfort zone, to leave his family, everybody behind.
NKJ Genesis 12:1 Now the LORD had
said to Abram: "Get out of your country, From your family And from your
father's house, To a land that I will show you.
He had no idea
what his ultimate destiny would be at the beginning.
Then that is
followed in the next of couple verses by the Abrahamic Covenant, as we looked
at last time, promising land, seed and blessing. Each of those elements
later developed in subsequent covenants with Israel – the land, the seed,
the blessing.
NKJ Hebrews 11:9 By faith he dwelt
in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the
heirs with him of the same promise;
It wasn't his
home. He wasn't considered a native to the population; he was a
sojourner. That's the key word in Genesis, the Hebrew word ger and
indicating that he was one who just lived and traveled in the land; but he
didn't have land (property) to call to call his own. He was just someone
who was passing through, looking to something that was future, something that
was more important. That relates back to the promise of God used 13 times
in Hebrews, 5 times in this chapter. That's the focal point here. The
promise was the fulfillment of the land promise given to him and also we’re
told he waited for the city, which has foundations whose builder and maker was
God.
Now tell me where
in Genesis we get any information that Abraham knew anything about a future
city. It's not there; but there's a lot of information that God revealed
to Noah, to Adam, to others in the Old Testament that's not recorded in
Scripture. So we know from these kinds of little openings (little hints)
that they knew a lot more about future things. Enoch did in terms of
prophecy as well. They knew a lot more about futures things and about
God’s plan and purposes than we can document from looking at the
Scripture. They had a clear understanding of much. And Abraham
clearly did too. As we’ll see in our study tonight he even have a good
understanding of the Doctrine of Resurrection which if you listen to liberal
scholars, you listen to others, this is not even in the Old Testament. But
you know when you have the New Testament to sort of fill out the skeletal revelation
that we have in the Old Testament that they did understand these particular
aspects.
So at the very
core of Abraham’s life, why Abraham is praised is the Abraham
Covenant. And Sarah is praised in verse 11 and then on into verse12.
So I thought it would
be good for us to use this as an opportunity to review a couple of key things
about the Abrahamic Covenant because this is the foundation. Again and
again and again we come back to the Abrahamic Covenant and these unconditional
promises that God gave to Abraham.
NKJ Genesis 12:3 I will bless
those who bless you…
This
is the basis for believers treating Jews well and treating Israel well and
supporting Israel – not because we believe that everything that they do
is right or that the Jewish nation's every decision is right. And if we
disagree with national policies of Israel, it doesn't necessarily mean that one
is anti-Semitic are going against Israel. It may mean that one has good
sense and can think objectively. But that always confuses people when we
get into this particular area.
One of
the things that has developed over the last ten years is the attempt by the liberal
political left to try to create distrust between what is perceived as a power
block that is the evangelical right and the evangelical support for Israel. So
the seeds of distrust have been a sewn (or attempted to be sewn) among Jews by
constantly stating these myths that the only reason those evangelicals want to
support you is because they want to get all the Jews back into the land so that
Jesus will come back and when Jesus comes back there's going to be the Battle
of Armageddon and all the Jews will be killed.
“See,
so the only reason they want to support Israel is so that all the Jews will get
killed.”
This
has been going on for about ten years. Last year when I went to the AIPAC
convention in Washington, that was one of the things that was addressed in a
breakout session dealing with the topic of how to understand our evangelical
allies. It was handled very well by the panel that was there. And there
were a number of rabbis that got up during the question and answer session and
said that they had tremendous opportunities (some of them) to speak in
evangelical churches, and they had worked with evangelicals in joint projects
many times. So they were saying that none of this is true. This is
not an accurate statement.
One
lady on the panel said that to be perfectly honest the only reason or the main
reason that evangelicals won the support of Israel and support Jews is because
in Genesis 12:3 God promised blessing for those who blessed Israel and they
just want to be blessed by God. Everyone got a good chuckle out of that.
Now just in terms
of review because this becomes the backdrop for understanding Hebrews
11. Now what's important here and I want to take you back to just sort of
a general understanding of things, is in Hebrews 11:17. We read:
NKJ Hebrews 11:17 By faith Abraham,
when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises
offered up his only begotten son,
So the offering
up of Isaac is specifically stated to be a test of his faith in Hebrews
11:17. Now we know from passages like James 1:2-4 that we are to count in
all joy when we encounter various tests because we know that the testing of our
faith… There it’s not a salvation faith. It's talking about our post
salvation faith, our spiritual growth faith - the utilization of the faith rest
drill as we grow in our spiritual life. So James 1:2-4 emphasizes the
point that we grow through these tests.
Anything can be a
test. A test is simply anytime you have the opportunity presented by the
circumstances of life to make a choice in responding to those circumstances by
trusting in God and applying what you know from the Bible or doing it your own
way. That can mean any kind of situation that we face in life whether they
are small or minor (relatively speaking) or whether they are major
events. Often how we train ourselves to respond in the minor events, then
that sets us so that when the major event occurs; then we have set ourselves so
that we don't have to think about it. We are trained to fall into that
pattern. If you don't, then when you hit the stress points in life and the
external adversity builds up; you’re going to fall back on what your normal
operating procedure is which is going to be utilization of the stress busters
(the problem solving devices of Scripture) or you're going to do it your own
way, out of flesh; one or the other.
This morning when
I was waking up and trying to work my way through my third cup of coffee and
make sure that the upper and lower eyelids were no longer close companions, I
was watching an interview on Fox News with one of the police officers that was
a first responder on the scene in the shooting that occurred at Fort Hood last
week. He had been in the military. He was retired military, I believe.
He had served 20 years. He was military police. He had been
working. I believe that they were Killeen police officers that
responded. They were civilian police anyway. They responded to that
event and this was the first time that he had ever the fired, been in a
situation where he needed to draw his weapon and fire in the line of duty.
The interviewer
said, “Well, how did you respond? How did you know what to do? What
did that feel like?”
He said, “We have
been trained so much and going to the range, firing over and over and over
again, that it gets into your muscle memory so that when you hit the real
situation; you just respond in terms of your training.”
And that's what
he did. See, if you don't train yourself and discipline yourself to
respond to the little seemingly innocuous situations in life where you train
yourself to respond biblically every time; then when you hit the tougher
adversities and challenges in life; then you fall back to your default
position. When you get in the spiritual warfare firefight of your life,
it's too late to figure out how to draw your weapon and shoot it. You have
to already have that in muscle memory so it just it becomes an automatic
response so that you don't think about it. You just respond in light of
your training.
But the training
doesn't come from the pastor; the training comes from your mentality (from your
mindset) and how you apply what you learn on a day-to-day basis. All the
pastor can do is teach you the principles; but you're the one who has to apply
them every day when you're driving down the freeway, dealing with some incompetent
cashier at the bank or whatever it is. You have to make those
decisions. Are you going to be irritable and grumpy and
impatient? Are you going to respond in grace and kindness and all of the
other attributes that need to be part of our life? Are we going to trust
God when things don't go the way they should, when we lose our job, when our
investments so south? In all of these kinds of things that hit us, are we
going to be maintain that relaxed mental attitude that comes because we know
that our life and our times and our circumstances are in the hand of God and we
can just then rest and relax and think in terms of well how does God want to
use me in this situation now that this has happened. If you're not relaxed
from doctrine, then what's going to happen is you’re going to hit that
situation and you're going to press the panic button and you're going to fall
apart.
Then three days
later you’re going to say, “Okay, wait a minute. I think I learned
something about this in Bible class. Let me go find my notes.”
That's a little
too late. You've been failing the test for three days.
So we have to
learn about the tests and how God used these tests in Abraham’s life. When
we went through Genesis, we looked at these in terms of 13 tests that I
identified that God used in spiritual advance for Abraham.
Now one other
thing I want to remind you of as I look at this is just to help you get this
back in your head. I really got this as a core idea in Charlie's Framework
series. That is to recognize that how the Bible (the New Testament) uses
Old Testament events and people and how the New Testament then connects these
Old Testament people and events and situations to key doctrines that are then
further developed and further enhanced in the New Testament. It shows the
unity of Scripture.
You're not going
to therefore (and I’m really teaching the prep school teachers here) that means
you don't teach the life of Abraham where it comes across as some sort of historical
or biographical study. How do the New Testament writers under the
inspiration the Holy Spirit go to Abraham and use Abraham?
There are various
ways in which Abraham is brought up in New Testament contexts. One is the
importance of the Abrahamic Covenant and that's primarily in Galatians 3 and
Galatians 4. Also you have Abraham used as the Father of Faith and the one
who’s justified by faith. He is the picture of justification by
faith. That’s Romans 4. Then here in Hebrews the picture is of
Abraham as one who grows. We see his whole life in more detail almost than
anybody else in the Old Testament. We see his spiritual growth from
Genesis 12 to Genesis 22. In those eleven chapters we go through Abraham’s
life and we see him grow from where he is in Genesis 12 (not trusting God,
trying to solve his problems on its own, not really understanding everything,
partial obedience) until we get to Genesis 22 and God tells him to kill the
promised son and to sacrifice him.
He says, “Yes sir,”
and heads off without giving it a second thought because he was completely
confident that even if he did kill Isaac that God would bring him back from the
dead. He was resting and relaxed in the promise to God. So that was
more real to him finally than anything else. That's where we need to be.
So just a
reminder of this, because it charts our own growth and picks up on that idea of
using the Bible to give us a framework for thinking. I also saw a problem
with this in the trips we have taken to Israel. In fact I’ve been working
on our travel manual. Arnold Fruchtenbaum has got a great book on the
historical geography of travelers. I forget what it’s called but it’s a
travel guide for Israel. It’s very extensive, but it’s history. It’s
archaeology, period. Boom! No theology there. You go to all these other
Christian travelers’ guides to Israel and all these different things you can
pick up at the store; they don’t differ at all from the travel guides that are
written in the secular marketplace. They just give you historical
information. You go to Israel. You listen to many pastors and many
Bible teachers, seminary professors and they'll take you to a site like the
wall, to the Temple Mount, Mount of Olives, Bethlehem, wherever and they’ll go
through the history that happened there. This is what happened,
period.
The real issue
is: why is it important that that happened here? How does that fit in
God's plan from Genesis to Revelation? That is when you can then answer
the question: why is it important for me to really know and understand this and
how does this shape the way I look at and respond to the events of life? That's
where you're really taking it to application.
That's what's
really going on there is what Charlie identified in his Framework. Other people
called it a couple of other things; but that's what that is that goes. It
builds a structure of thought so that you have this biblical framework then
that defines and shapes the way you think so that when you encounter
circumstances and situations in life, the first thing you're going to do is
ask: where do I find the parallels in the Scripture? Who went through
something like this? How did they respond? How did they
fail? How did they succeed? Then what are the principles from I
learned from that for my situation and my circumstance? That's the essence
of what Framework is.
What Charlie
realized when he started that series back when he was back in Lubbock back in
the early 70’s was that he had all these college kids who had some kind of background
in the Bible churches or doctrinal churches; but they couldn't put any of it
together. They just heard these random disconnected stories in the Bible;
but they didn't understand how they connected and once you connect the dots how
that then impacts the way you think. So he started developing this
approach which was just brilliant starting off with the fact that as you go
through the Old Testament, there are key events that are referred to and
brought up again over and over again in the New Testament, events that Stephen
brought up when he gives his sermon in Acts 7, events that Paul constantly goes
to to provide the framework for understanding what he's saying about the cross
and the work of Christ on the cross.
If you don't
understand Genesis 1, you don't understand anything about creation. You
can’t understand Romans 1. If you don't understand Genesis 2, you can’t
understand Ephesians 5 and the whole doctrine of marriage and the role of men
and the role of women. If you don't understand Genesis 3 which is where
sin and that the judgment for sin are introduced, then you can’t understand
that Jesus had to go to the cross. These events (creation and the separate
creation of man and woman and the fall of sin) are referred to at key times throughout
the New Testament. So you have to learn to think in those terms to build
that structure. These aren’t just isolated episodes and stories and people
that are referred to in the New Testament. There is a divine design in the
pattern, why God chooses these believers among the hundreds of other believers
that existed in the time from Noah to Jesus.
NKJ Hebrews 11:8 By faith Abraham
obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an
inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.
The last
thing he mentions in relationship to Abraham is in verse 17:
NKJ Hebrews 11:17 By faith Abraham,
when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises
offered up his only begotten son,
So what I’m going
to cover in these thirteen points is what fills out what else happened between
the first event and the 13th event. So the first test was to go
to a new land, leave the family behind; and it was only partial obedience.
Remember, he took his nephew with him and his father with him. He doesn't
leave the whole family behind. He takes them with him. He goes to
Haran up in the northern part of Syria now; and he stays there for probably ten
or fifteen years until his father dies. Even then he doesn't drop off Lot.
He takes him with him and what happens? That creates a problem. We get
into Genesis 13 and Lot’s herdsmen are having battles with Abraham’s
herdsmen. There is all this family conflict that comes along because
whenever you try to solve the problems in your life with human viewpoint, what
happens is you create new problems because human viewpoint never works.
NKJ Proverbs 14:12 There is a way that seems
right to a man, But its end is the way of death.
So human
viewpoint may provide a seemingly temporary solution, but it's going to
exacerbate the problem and unintended consequences and you're going to be faced
with a new battery of problems, which come as a result of those bad
decisions. If you extrapolate that to a nation when nations use bad
decisions from human viewpoint to solve their problems; then all that happens
is it creates a whole new series of problems and those problems make more
problems until eventually the house of cards for those nations eventually
collapses because it's all built on a fantasy foundation.
So Abraham has
partial obedience and it sets up for future problems.
He
says, “You pick the land you want to go to.”
Lot
picked the most beautiful land, the most well-watered land. It's not that way
today; it’s all desert and barren. But then it was. So he passes this
test by handling the people testing with Lot in grace and generosity, grace
orientation. He’s trusting God for the land; God promised it to him
so he is able to relax and be generous.
4.
There's a test to protect and defend his neighbors. What as he supposed to
do? He was to be a blessing to all. That was a command in Genesis
12:3. It doesn't say you be a blessing. It’s not a description. It is
a command that he was to bless those around him. So when the Chedorlaomer
invasion occurs and they come down and they wipe out these towns and steal
everything, kidnap the people and haul them off into captivity, he organizes
all of his men and he goes after them. He exercises the initiative and he
defeats them and obviously he's trusting God in the midst of all of this to
provide him the victory. He defeats these kings, rescues Lot and rescues
all of the plunder and all of the material goods that had been stolen and
returned everything to its original owner.
In the
process he has another test, which is to express gratitude to God. After
he has a great victory is he going to become puffed up in arrogance, think
about how great he is, what a great victory he's had over this organized army
or whether he's going to be humble and express gratitude to God which is what
he does. He passes the test and he gave of that which he rescued. He
gave a portion to Melchizedek. So he passes the test.
6.
Then the sixth test was a test to quit worrying about when God's going to
provide for the seed. God promised you a seed from your own
loins. Just relax. It’ll happen when of God's timing comes
along. Don't push it. God gives him a promise at the beginning of
Genesis 15 in the first verse, where God says:
NKJ Genesis 15:1 After these things
the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, "Do not be afraid,
Abram. I am your
shield, your exceedingly great reward."
There’s
your promise. What's the promise going to bring? A reward; an inheritance. Notice
the connection between those ideas. Then it's in that chapter that God is
going to cut the covenant, formally institute the covenant with Abraham by
laying out the sacrifices, splitting them in two, causing a deep sleep to call
on Abraham. Then God alone passed between the sacrifices. So Abraham
passes that test.
7.
Then in the seventh test, he is going to fail. He failed miserably with
consequences that reverberate down through time.
This
is when Sarah came to him and said, “You know I’m getting too old to do this
baby thing, but you're still functional. Why don't you take my handmaid Hagar?”
So we
have another human viewpoint solution, which always generates more
problems. We still are faced with the problem of the Arabs and the whole
Arab-Israeli conflict. He failed; He listened to Sarah, but later there is
spiritual growth on Sarah’s part. That's what we come to in the next
couple of verses in Hebrews 11.
Hebrews 11 we see
the evidence in Sarah.
NKJ Hebrews 11:11 By faith Sarah
herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she
was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.
Now isn’t that an
odd phrase? Women don't produce seed. Men produce seed. Women
produce an egg. But the term is used because it connects the dots of the
seed terms from Genesis 3:15 all the way down to Jesus.
NKJ Hebrews 11:11 By faith Sarah
herself also received strength
This is referring
to the fact that God miraculously restored her physically so that she could
reproduce. He restored her reproductive organs. And I have heard a
medical doctor talk about this. All that would be involved in this because when
a woman has gone through menopause and all the things that happen to the womb
and the ovaries. Everything dries up and it doesn't produce eggs anymore,
and everything is shot. What is necessary for God to do in order to enable
her to be pregnant is miraculous. He’s has got to bring all of that, all
those mechanisms back to life and restore them. And it's much more than
“poof” you’re pregnant. There's a whole thing that has to be restored there
because the dried up womb can no longer stretch in order to provide for the
growth of the baby inside. So all that has to be changed. It’s just a
great picture of how God can bring life where there's death. All of these
ideas point towards what God can do spiritually in terms of regeneration and
bringing spiritual life where there is spiritual death.
NKJ Hebrews 11:11 By faith Sarah
herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she
was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.
She is trusting
in the character of God and focusing on the promise that He had made to Abraham
and that God would fulfill that particular promise. That takes us back to
Genesis 17:16-19. This is where God is speaking to Abraham, telling him
that the seed is going to come through Sarah.
NKJ Genesis 17:16 "And I will
bless her and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall
be a mother of
nations; kings of peoples shall be from her."
NKJ Genesis 17:17 Then Abraham fell
on his face and laughed,
He’s not laughing
because he doesn't believe God. He's laughing from joy.
and said in his heart,
There's a little
skepticism there.
"Shall a child be
born to a man who is one hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety
years old, bear a
child?"
Can this really
happen? He's not really doubting God. It’s beyond his
comprehension.
NKJ Genesis 17:19 Then God said:
"No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name
Isaac;
Meaning
laughter.
I will establish My covenant
with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him.
So that goes on.
The Abrahamic Covenant is going to be reiterated several times in Genesis in
terms of Isaac, in terms of Jacob, in terms of Joseph as well.
Then in Genesis
21:1-3 we have the immediate event of the birth described.
NKJ Genesis 21:1 And the LORD
visited Sarah as He had said,
This is the
backdrop for what we understand in Hebrews 11:11. The Lord visited Sarah
as he had said.
and the LORD did for Sarah as
He had spoken.
The promise is
fulfilled precisely, not just generally, not just in some sort of vague
spiritualized sense. But literally and physically there is a birth.
NKJ Genesis 21:2 For Sarah
conceived
She's been
strengthened.
and bore Abraham a son in his
old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him.
See the
whole issue was trusting God to do it in the right timing.
NKJ Genesis 21:3 And Abraham called
the name of his son who was born to him -- whom Sarah bore to him -- Isaac.
That's the
fulfillment. Hebrews 11 is not just focusing on Abraham and his faith; but
also Sarah’s faith, that she grew spiritually through these tests as well,
specifically related to the promises of land, seed and blessing that God had
outlined in the Abrahamic Covenant.
The 8th test was a test to be circumcised. I'm not going to
go into descriptive details, here but when you're about 90 ninety years old and
you don't have anesthesia this is not something I am sure Abraham looked
forward to. This was described in Genesis 17:1-25 and Abraham passed the test.
Then the 9th test was a test of hospitality to his visitors
in Genesis 18. In the first 15 verses the three strangers come to
Abraham’s tent. He sees them coming and the test is how's he going to respond
to strangers. He's going to respond to them out of grace and generosity
and hospitality. He wants them to come in, rest, relax, and take a
nap. He goes out and physically finds the calf that he is going to cook
for dinner. He doesn't go down to HEB or Rice Epicurean or Central Market
and pick up a to-go meal or call Pappadeaux’s. He goes out to the field,
gets the calf or bullock, brings it in, slaughters it, skins it, butchers it,
comes and prepares a meal from scratch. This is going to take several
hours. Those of you who've been deer hunting and you’re your own
butchering you know what I'm talking about. It doesn't happen
quickly. So they’re there for quite a while and he is going to give them
the best that he can. He is going to be generous with them. This
shows his grace orientation to those visitors and in the course of that time he
will discover, God will allow him to see, that it is the angel of the
Lord (One of them is the pre-incarnate lord Jesus Christ. The other
two are angels).
So as he discovers that he has another test. What is she going to
do now and ask for when he has the Lord sitting at dinner? What would you
ask for if the Lord was sitting at dinner?
“Well,
Lord I want to make sure my job stays, I don't get laid off. Why don't you
cure me of this or cure me of that?”
We
often fall back on a self centered response. But that's not
Abraham. He’s passing the test. He is oriented towards others and so
his question is – what are you all doing? He finds out the two
angels are going to go off to judge and destroy Sodom.
So he
says, “Well Lord, would you destroy the city if there were twenty righteous men
there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, if there were ten?
He
works it down and he’s building a case with God. This is has implications
for prayer life, building a rationale based on doctrine, based on grace on the
basis of which he can present a case to deliver Lot and his family. He
shows grace orientation to Lot who had done nothing to deserve it; and he shows
his impersonal love toward Lot and he focuses on Lot’s deliverance even though
he's living down there in sin city Sodom.
Then in point 11: the test to protect the seed during his visit to
Gerar. This is the land of the Philistines, the area along the coast
there, the Gaza Strip today. He goes there and once again he pulls the
same stunt. So we have patterns. You just keep committing the same
sins you ever did. Don't get self righteous with Abraham just because it’s
twenty years later. He's still trying to lie about Sarah and pass her off
as his sister. We all have the same patterns of sin in our life and we
keep failing again and again and again. But God deals with us in
grace. So he tries to pass off Sarah, and he fails this test. But God
intervenes to protect the seed to make sure that no one gets the idea that it
was someone other than Abraham who's the father of the soon to be born
Isaac.
Then the 12th test was to protect the heir. Now that
Isaac’s born, what are we going to do with Ishmael and with Hagar, because
there's going to be jealousy and other problems in the house with these two
boys jockeying for favor? God gives him the guidance which again through
(this time) through his wife.
She says, “You know we ought to send them away.”
He
recognizes the wisdom of that and he sends Hagar and Ishmael away. He
passes this test because he understands he has to protect the seed. So
he's finally getting the point that God is going to do what God promises He's
going to do and that God has the power to control the circumstances and it's
not up to us to try to manipulate the situation to get God’s promises
fulfilled. This means he finally gets it so that when God sends him to
sacrifice the promised seed in Genesis 22 and to take His Son (His only
Son) and to take him to the mountains of Mariah and to sacrifice him
there.
Abraham says, “Sure thing. I'm packing my bags. We’re on the way.”
It's in Hebrews
though that we come to understand when we get down to verse 19 that Abraham
concluded that God was able to raise him up even from the dead from which he
also received him in a figurative sense. The point is that Abraham clearly
understood the whole Doctrine of Resurrection and knew that God could raise
Isaac from the dead because He would have to in order to fulfill His promises
because he finally learned God always fulfills His promises. He never
breaks His Word and you can always trust Him.
This then is the
backdrop for our study on the Hebrews 11:11-12. This leads into the
conclusion. At this part there’s an immediate conclusion in this section,
verse 13:
NKJ Hebrews 11:13 These all died in
faith,
Who are the
“these?” The “these” takes us back to the examples that he has talked
about already: Abel, Enoch, Abraham and Sarah. They all died in faith;
Isaac and Jacob as well, which he had mentioned in verse
9.
not having received the
promises,
What
promises? The land promise, the seed promise, and the ultimate fulfillment
of those.
but having seen them afar off
God gave them just
a tantalizing hint of what that fulfillment would be like.
were assured of them,
They were
confident in God. Faith is that confidence we have in God.
embraced them and
That is the
promises.
confessed
That is admitted.
that they were strangers and
pilgrims on the earth.
They weren’t
disengaged from the earth. They were involved in commerce. They were
involved in trade. They were involved in all kinds of things; but they
still recognized that that wasn't the ultimate end. The ultimate end has
to do with the heavenly citizenship, the heavenly destiny, not the earthly
destiny.
NKJ Hebrews 11:14 For those who say
such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland.
How did they
declare it? They declared it by their obedience; by the way faith changed
the way they lived.
So verse 15:
NKJ Hebrews 11:15 And truly if they
had called to mind that country from which they had come out,
That is Ur of the
Chaldeas.
they would have had
opportunity to return.
They could have
gone back. That’s what that’s saying – if they’d wanted to. But
they didn’t because they were focusing forward and not backward.
So conclusion,
verse 16:
NKJ Hebrews 11:16 But now they
desire a better, that is, a heavenly country.
They've had their
priorities changed by the Word God.
Therefore God is not ashamed
to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.
So we’ll come
back next time, look at a couple of ideas that are inherent in this in terms of
earthly responsibilities and heavenly destiny. Then we will press on into
the next section of Abraham’s life dealing with the tests with Isaac.
Let’s close in
prayer.