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[00:00:00] Book of Genesis. And chapter twelve. The 12th chapter of Genesis.
[00:00:08] Genesis, chapter twelve. Reading from verse one.
[00:00:15] Now the Lord said unto Abram, get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house unto the land that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation.
[00:00:31] And I will bless thee and make thy name great.
[00:00:36] And be thou a blessing.
[00:00:38] And I will bless them that bless thee. And him that curseth thee will I curse.
[00:00:45] And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
[00:00:51] So Abram went as the lord had spoken unto him. And lot went with him. And Abram was 75 years old when he departed out of Haran.
[00:01:04] And Abram took Sarai, his wife, and lot, his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered and the souls that they had gotten in Hiram. And they went forth to go into the land of Canaan.
[00:01:18] And into the land of Canaan they came.
[00:01:22] And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem, unto the oak of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land.
[00:01:33] And the Lord appeared unto Abram and said unto thy seed will I give this land. And there buildeth he an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him.
[00:01:45] And he removed from thence unto the mountain on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west and AI on the east. And there he builded an altar unto the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed going on still toward the south.
[00:02:11] And then in the New Testament, in Hebrews and the 11th chapter, from verse eight.
[00:02:20] Hebrews, chapter eleven.
[00:02:25] From verse eight.
[00:02:36] By faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance.
[00:02:48] And he went out not knowing whither he went.
[00:02:53] By faith, he became a sojourner in the land of promise as in a land not his own dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
[00:03:18] By faith, even Sarah herself received power to conceive seed when she was past age. Since she counted him faithful who had promised.
[00:03:31] Wherefore also there sprang of one and him as good as dead. So many as the stars of heaven in multitude. And as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable.
[00:03:45] These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
[00:04:01] For they that say such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of their own. And if indeed they had been mindful of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return.
[00:04:17] But now they desire a better country. That is a heavenly wherefore God is not ashamed of of them to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
[00:04:33] I want this evening, and the Lord willing, next Thursday evening, as the Lord enables me to underline some lessons from the life of Abraham.
[00:04:50] Just a few lessons from the life of Abraham.
[00:04:57] Abraham was given a title in the word of God which is unique.
[00:05:06] He was called the father of all who believe to no other servant of the Lord, to no other prophet or patriarch. Was such a title given only to Abraham.
[00:05:26] He was unique in this. And there is another way in which Abraham is unique. He is the one type of the Father we have in the Old Testament, the Fatherhood of God.
[00:05:43] We have so many types of the Son and many types of the Holy Spirit. But I think I'm right in saying that Abraham, again, is unique in that he is the type of the Father who gave his only begotten son.
[00:06:07] Therefore, I think we can learn from the life of Abraham some fundamental and essential lessons in the life of faith or in the christian life, however we like to look at it.
[00:06:27] And this evening I shall just take three or four lessons. I shall only touch on them, but I will underline them and leave you to stay. Study the word on this and see how much you can get out from the word. About these.
[00:06:44] I shall seek to take this evening some of the fundamental underlying lessons of Abraham's life. And next week, if the Lord enables us, we will take some of the more detailed lessons as we have it in the story in Genesis.
[00:07:03] The first great lesson, in my estimation, in the life of Abraham is the necessity of divine vision.
[00:07:15] The necessity of divine vision. Abraham never became a man of faith until he was first a man of vision.
[00:07:33] All so called faith that is built on anything less than revelation and divine enlightenment is artificial.
[00:07:50] It is a religious exercise.
[00:07:53] It never goes through the test.
[00:07:57] Now there is a tremendous amount in christian circles of so called faith.
[00:08:04] It is a hotch potch of traditionalism, formalism, background, heritage and quite a bit of western culture all rolled into one.
[00:08:23] But real faith, living faith, working faith, practical faith, is built on revelation.
[00:08:38] A man or a woman never has got saved because they have wept for months on end, or because they have worked their fingers to the bone in good works or because they have done penances galore.
[00:08:59] No one has ever yet got saved that way.
[00:09:04] You do not get saved by signing a decision form.
[00:09:09] You get saved when in some act of God, a shaft of divine light illuminates your heart.
[00:09:20] Sometimes it is almost so small a way that it appears insignificant. And some onlookers could almost overlook it as being nothing at all.
[00:09:37] But when a person whos been blind and in darkness suddenly begins to become aware that Jesus is the saviour of the world, and their saviour, some shaft of divine light has shone into that soul, we all have found the Lord in one way or another, through beholding the lamb of God, who has borne away the sin of the world.
[00:10:12] You must have all had the experience, some more than others, of course, of having heard many gospel messages, having heard many Sunday school lessons, having read many christian sermons, and they didn't do a thing. And then suddenly one day, someone said a few words that sank immediately into our consciousness.
[00:10:40] And for the first time we came under conviction and we came into repentance.
[00:10:45] And for the first time we began to seek the Lord.
[00:10:49] And the end of that quest was the grace of God saving us. Now, what I am simply saying is this.
[00:11:00] You never ever experience living faith until first you see something with the eye of your heart.
[00:11:11] And so it is here in the life of Abraham.
[00:11:18] Abraham is known in the Bible supremely as a man of faith.
[00:11:24] I suppose if most christians who hardly know their bibles were asked, what does the life of Abraham teach? Teach, you would say faith, for everyone associates faith with Abraham more than any other quality.
[00:11:43] We associate faith with Abraham.
[00:11:47] But Abraham only became a man of faith and an illustration of the principle of faith, because he was a man of divine vision.
[00:12:03] It was Stephen in the acts and chapter seven and verse two and three who gave us the clue to this. This is how he put it. Brethren and fathers, hearken.
[00:12:20] The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran and said unto him, get thee out of thy land and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show thee. Then he came out of the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Haran.
[00:12:46] The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia.
[00:12:58] Something happened to Abraham.
[00:13:01] God revealed himself to Abraham. We do not actually know what it was or how it was that God revealed himself. All we have is this glorious phrase. The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham.
[00:13:24] There was something to do with glory.
[00:13:28] And from that moment on, Abraham's life was a changed life. He was yet to sin, and to sin grievously. He was to have collapses of faith as well as triumphs of faith. He was to go down into Egypt and lie to Pharaoh and later perpetrate the same lie with King Abimelech.
[00:13:54] He was to lie with Hagar and produce Ishmael.
[00:13:59] But in spite of all his failings and all the tragedies of his life, from the moment that the God of glory appeared to Abraham, he was a changed man.
[00:14:15] There is a sense in which, though he may have momentarily looked back, he moved forward in a new direction. From the moment God appeared to him.
[00:14:35] In Hebrews, chapter eleven, in the passage that we have read together, we have the writer to the Hebrews put this in another way. This is how he puts it. He said, verse nine, by faith.
[00:14:53] Verse ten, for he looked for the city which has the foundations, whose builder and maker, God.
[00:15:06] That is a most remarkable phrase.
[00:15:10] The writer to the Hebrews sums up the life of Abraham in these terms. He wasn't just a man of faith.
[00:15:19] He was a man who saw something.
[00:15:23] And because he saw something, he became a man of faith.
[00:15:29] What he saw, he responded to in faith, and he became a man whose whole life was the illustration of the principle of faith, because of what he saw. And what did he see?
[00:15:48] The writer of the Hebrew says, he looked for the city which has the foundations, a remarkable faith.
[00:15:57] When we go back to Genesis, we find in Genesis chapter eleven the whole story of the tower of Babel.
[00:16:07] How man, by his own ingenuity, with his own resources, with his own energy, with his own talents, sought to create a metropolis and to span the gulf between earth and heaven, somehow or other to bring that lost paradise back into touch with fallen earth. Only by his own attempts, by his own energies, by his own creative abilities.
[00:16:37] We know the story of Babel. We know how God came down and looked at it and saw what they were seeking to do, knew the motivating forces behind their actions and smote them with this curse that we call languages, which we have to this day, some more terrible than others.
[00:17:06] Babel became, from Genesis eleven onwards, the symbol of all man's achievements, all man's aspirations, fallen man's achievement, fallen man's creativity, fallen man's ingenuity, fallen man's resources.
[00:17:29] In, of course, Hebrew, all the way through the Old Testament. We don't have the word babylon. That's a greek name. We have in Hebrew the word bavel. Babel. They called this place Babil, the gate of God, because they said this thing that we are creating is the gateway to a utopia. This is the entrance to a golden age. This is the way into an era of peace and prosperity and equality and justice and all the rest of it. Doesn't it have an extraordinarily modern ring to it?
[00:18:10] Right back in the mists of antiquity we find that men built something, a metropolis that was. They called it the gate of God, Babil, because it is the gateway into a utopia, into a paradise which we have lost.
[00:18:29] God persuaded some hebrew scribe to change it from Babil to Bav el, which means in Hebrew, confusion.
[00:18:40] God said, do not call this the gate of God because it is not the gate of God, it is confusion. And it will be to them confusion and more confusion and more confusion and more confusion till the end of time.
[00:18:57] And isnt that the story of the League of Nations and of the United nations and of every single attempt that man has ever made to somehow or other bring us into this golden age by his own ingenuity? It has always been confusion and more confusion and more confusion. A babble of voices it is interesting that when the God of glory appeared to Abraham in the beginning of chapter twelve, we're not told in chapter twelve much about it. But the writer to the Hebrews tells us that he, in that vision of the God of glory, looked for the city which has the foundations. Babel may appear to be magnificent, Babylon may appear to be almost eternal with its boulevards and its zoological gardens and its botanical gardens and all its other marvelous sort of ways.
[00:20:03] But it is only apparent Babylon has no foundations.
[00:20:09] This city that Abraham looked for has the foundations. Now, the point I'm making is simply this, that Babylon has passed away, but Babylon is still with us. London is Babylon and Paris is Babylon and Rome is Babylon and Moscow is Babylon and Stockholm is Babylon and Washington is Babylon and Peking is Babylon. Every single city of this world is the expression of Babylon.
[00:20:44] The city which has the foundations is the Jerusalem which is above, which is the mother of all who have been born of God.
[00:20:58] Now, vision, I suggest, is a tremendous thing. We tend to think of Abraham as some semi illiterate, smelly, wandering Bedouin shepherd with some scraggy goats and sheep and possibly a scraggier camel or two wandering through the sort of deserts of the Middle east. The normal liberal. This is what we were brought up on. I remember it at school. We were told that Abraham could neither read nor write.
[00:21:35] That somehow other. Much of the scriptures, therefore, that the Christians and others trusted could not possibly be reliable because these people could neither read nor write.
[00:21:49] Abraham was just some Bedouin.
[00:21:55] I'm sorry to see that in the Encyclopedia Judaica, in this new huge thing. They say that he was a semi Bedouin.
[00:22:08] But Abraham was not some semi illiterate Bedouin.
[00:22:16] He came from one of the great cultured cities and areas of his day with a sophistication and an education second to none. But when the God of glory appeared to Abraham, the whole thing that he knew sank into oblivion.
[00:22:40] He never looked back on ur of the Chaldees again in his whole life.
[00:22:47] He may have been guilty of other things, but ur, with its wonderful banking houses and its beautiful shopping centers and all the rest of its sophistication, held no enchantment or temptation for Abraham. Again, he had seen something which showed up the intrinsic superficiality of ur, of the Chaldees, so that he could never again be enchained by it.
[00:23:22] Now I believe that that goes to the root of many of our problems.
[00:23:29] If we were men and women of vision, if we really were to be people who have seen the Lord and seen increasingly what the purpose of God is in Christ, I believe that many of the things that enchain us and ensnare us and become deep and deeply entrenched issues in our lives would be settled.
[00:23:58] If you dont see much, youre not prepared to sacrifice much.
[00:24:05] But if youve seen something, really seen it with the eye of the heart, then this world has not got the same claim or hold on us that it had before.
[00:24:23] It's interesting again in Hebrews eleven eight to read this by faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out when he was called. The apostle Paul says in Ephesians and chapter four and verse one, I, therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called.
[00:24:55] I wonder how many of us know the calling with which we've been called. Do we think that our calling is to be saved?
[00:25:06] Our salvation is but the means to bring us back into our calling.
[00:25:15] I beseech you therefore, to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called. Again. In Philippians and chapter three and verse 14. He puts it like this. I press on toward the goal, unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. This tremendous chapter, when he speaks about all the things that he's let go of, he is just in the succession of Abraham.
[00:25:53] He has seen something so tremendous that he lets go of everything in order that he might press on toward the goal of this prize.
[00:26:09] Under the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, he's seen something. The apostle Paul has been apprehended by divine vision. He has seen the Lord, and in seeing the Lord, he has seen everything else.
[00:26:28] Now, this is my point, that it's not visions we need, although God knows sometimes we need a few of them to waken us up. It says, your young men shall dream dreams, your old men shall see visions and the middle age somehow in between.
[00:26:45] But it seems to me that we need now and again a vision or two, a dream or two, just to waken us all up. But we're not talking about visions or dreams. We're talking about vision. Understanding spiritual perception, spiritual seeing, a beholding of the Lord. And nor am I speaking of seeing a whole lot of things as a sort of series of doctrines, so many credal statements. I mean, to see the Lord and in seeing the Lord, to have the whole explanation of the calling of God in Christ, in seeing the Lord, to understand why God created man, what his objective was in creating man, and why he has redeemed fallen man. I believe that in seeing the Lord we can see everything.
[00:27:48] The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham. And in that revelation of the God of glory, Abraham saw something. He saw a city. And the apostle John puts it like this. At the end he says, and I saw the new Jerusalem, the holy city, coming down out of heaven, having the glory of God, the God of glory, and the expression of that glory through a city that is made up of living stones built together in Christ.
[00:28:33] Oh, what a tremendous thing all this is. For the Bible speaks of this city as the bride, the wife of the lamb.
[00:28:48] It is very interesting that our Lord Jesus said in John chapter eight and verse 56, your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad.
[00:29:07] So much for the idea that Abraham was some sort of prehistoric saint with a very, very limited understanding of spiritual things.
[00:29:22] It seems to me that here we are dealing with a man who understood far more of the eternal purpose of God in the Messiah than the vast majority of christians do at the end of the New Testament age.
[00:29:37] Shame on us. Shame on us. Abraham will scold us all when we enter the kingdom if we have less knowledge than he of what we have been called into.
[00:29:55] Jesus said he saw it and was glad. Isn't that an interesting phrase? So Abraham saw the day of the Lord Jesus and was glad.
[00:30:08] Where did he see it? We have no account in Genesis about these things. It must have been somehow to do with the God of glory. And it must have been to do with some of these other tremendous experiences he had. For instance, when the Lord said to him, in thy seed, earth be blessed. Yes, that's right. That's right. In thy seed. That's right. Galatians says, of course, that it was in the singular, not in the plural. Maybe dear Abraham thought about that for a while as to why it was not just a plural seed, but in one person.
[00:30:51] And thought that beyond Isaac he saw something.
[00:30:55] It's interesting that when he was ready to slay his son. He believed that he would receive him back from the dead.
[00:31:03] We just don't know how much the Holy Spirit educated Abraham in all this. But one thing we can say here, we have a principle that because Abraham was a man of spiritual understanding. He became a man of dynamic faith.
[00:31:24] Now we all have problems about faith.
[00:31:28] We seem to feel somehow that if we could only screw up more faith, if we could only produce more faith, if somehow we could collect our little bits of faith together. And sort of push them like dough into one lump, we get somewhere.
[00:31:44] But in actual fact, what we need to bother about is seeing the Lord.
[00:31:51] For it is as we see the Lord. And I dont just mean in sentimental picture form.
[00:31:57] I mean in spiritual understanding of the significance of the Lord Jesus.
[00:32:05] Who is the Lord Jesus? What is the Lord Jesus? Why the Lord Jesus?
[00:32:12] Why did he die on the kwa? What did he do on the qua?
[00:32:17] What is it a means to in understanding the answer to these questions? We shall become men and women of faith.
[00:32:29] We shall be see throughers, as Norman Grubb says, and not seattas.
[00:32:38] Always just seeing things as they are. We shall look through to see the things that are beyond. Now, may I just say a few things about vision. And pass on to another lesson? And that is that vision always disturbs far from the general idea. That vision gives you that wonderful sort of comfort feeling that you have been selected for some divine visitation. And that you are unique. A vision does quite the opposite. It disturbs.
[00:33:12] When the God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, he went out.
[00:33:18] It disturbed his whole way of life. So be careful when you ask the Lord to start to reveal himself to you.
[00:33:30] Its disturbing to really be a person of vision.
[00:33:36] If you dont know what the church is, youll never have any pain in your heart about the present state of things amongst the people of God.
[00:33:45] But if once you begin to see something of what the body of the Lord Jesus is.
[00:33:51] You will come into some kind of anguish and pain concerning the state of the people of God, if once you begin to understand what the testimony of Jesus is, you will undoubtedly begin to be introduced into the fellowship of his sufferings. If you have no understanding of the testimony of Jesus, why, it doesn't mean anything. You can float through life unperturbed. You can enjoy the little meetings and the rallies, just feeling that everything's fine.
[00:34:21] Like Nehemiah, it was only when he heard, and it sank into his heart, what had happened in Jerusalem that he began to weep and weep, till the king asked him, what is it? Are you sick, Nehemiah? And when he finally gave him leave to go to Jerusalem, the first thing he did by night was to go right round the broken down walls and view the whole thing.
[00:34:43] The man was a man that was burdened. And it's interesting that many of the prophets used this little word, burden, the burden of the word of the Lord, which came unto so and so.
[00:34:58] They saw something, and what they saw disturbed them.
[00:35:05] It was a burden.
[00:35:08] It wasn't just something that was for exhibition, for self aggrandizement, for attracting attention to oneself, but it became something that brought them into an inward travail. We can never be the same again once we've really seen the Lord.
[00:35:36] I'm always amazed, have been in my little life, to see the way people make great claims. Often the people who make the greatest claims, only in a year or two to backtrack on their great claims and diametrically contradict them, just simply do things that make you. What did they see?
[00:36:01] What did they see?
[00:36:04] When something's in the head, and that's the level of it, you can as easily shed it as you learnt it, but when it goes into your being, it's like spiritual suicide. You can never contradict it, for it has become you. It has entered into your. It has apprehended you. God has taken hold of you through what you have seen. That's why the book of proverbs says, where there is no vision, the people perish, they go to pieces.
[00:36:45] And why the apostle Paul prayed that the father of our Lord Jesus Christ would grant to those folks who read the ephesian letter a spirit of revelation and wisdom in the knowledge of Christ, having the eyes of their hearts enlightened, that they might know. Now, thats the first lesson. Now the second lesson. Id just like to underline this evening from the life of Abraham, ive put it, like all things of God, I suppose this is the hardest lesson of all.
[00:37:20] Its one thing to see the Lord, its another thing to be dealt with. By the Lord, if only by seeing the Lord, we would just see some great purpose of his and some great objective and aim. But if we've really seen the Lord, it's not long before the Lord starts to deal with us because of what we have seen.
[00:37:43] In other words, the Lord begins to bring us into line with what he's shown us. And that can be very painful indeed. For Abraham, it meant a totally new life. You know, it's one lovely thing to put the God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham.
[00:38:04] What a lovely phrase, what a rhythm there is in it. The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham.
[00:38:14] And I'm quite sure many of us as we hear go, oh, I wish the God of glory would appear to me like that. I wish it could be said of me, the God of glory appeared unto so and so.
[00:38:28] But you see, this is how the word of God puts it in Genesis. Now, the Lord said unto Abraham, get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house unto the land that I will show thee.
[00:38:51] He spoke some other wonderful things. I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and make thy name great. And be thou a blessing, and I will bless them that bless thee. And him that curseth thee will I curse. And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
[00:39:08] For Abraham, that call of God meant a totally new life.
[00:39:18] No longer ur, no longer the routine of his life in ur, no longer the sophistication of his life in ur, no longer the nice family home he had in ur, all the other things that belonged to a settled condition of life. The whole thing changed from that moment. God had said to him, get thee out. And God was quite specific. He said, get thee out of thy country, out of thy kindred, out of thy father's house, into the land that I will show thee.
[00:39:55] Abraham knew in his heart what every true believer knows spiritually. That they have been delivered from the powers of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of his dear son. It was a total change of position.
[00:40:18] It was a change of sphere, if you like. He was taken out of one whole milieu and put into another, taken out of one whole, as it were, atmosphere and transferred into another.
[00:40:35] Now for Abraham, everything was to be of God in er, of the Chaldees. I suppose the Lord had allowed 75% of Abrahams life if he had known the Lord. And according to jewish tradition, Abraham knew the Lord before his vision came.
[00:40:53] But that of course is not in the word, so we cant go on it.
[00:40:56] But if its true, what it means is this, that there may have been 75% of his life was from himself.
[00:41:07] And 25% was dependence upon God. But the moment he stepped out in obedience to the call of God. It was a total dependence upon God that was required. From then on, everything had to be of God. God said, I will give thee this land. But it had to be God who gave him the land. And Abraham was to spend the whole of his days living in the land which God had promised to him in tents, the land of promise as a land not his own.
[00:41:47] God said, in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
[00:41:52] And he had to wait till he was 100 years of age. And a miracle in Sarah before that could be fulfilled. It had to be of God.
[00:42:06] Abraham fell back on other means to somehow get that promise fulfilled.
[00:42:13] And the trouble is with us to this day.
[00:42:18] The purpose of God.
[00:42:22] The purpose of God could not be fulfilled by Abraham's flesh. Or Abraham's energies or Abraham's zeal. It had to be fulfilled by simple, direct, straightforward obedience to the Lord. And dependence upon the Lord. Now, this was the meaning really of his. His election. You see, whatever we may feel, we don't often talk about it. Here we are an elect people.
[00:42:53] What does it mean to be an elect people?
[00:42:56] It means that we have been called and chosen.
[00:43:03] Abraham was chosen by the Lord.
[00:43:09] Everyone agrees on that matter.
[00:43:13] God stretched forth his hand. And out of the thousands of the earth. He took hold of this one man, Abraham.
[00:43:19] And he appeared to him and spoke to him.
[00:43:24] What was the meaning of that election?
[00:43:27] That Abraham was separated from the world. And from the destiny of this world to another creation.
[00:43:38] He was delivered from the powers of darkness. And transferred into the kingdom of God's son. I think of so many scriptures in connection with this. I think of those wonderful words. Our Lord said, ye did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you. That ye should go. And that you should bear fruit. And that your fruit should remain. Or I think of these wonderful words that are so mysterious. Listen to them in Romans eight from verse 28. And we know that to them that love God. All things work together for good. Even to them that are called according to his purpose. For whom he foreknew. He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his son. That he might be the firstborn among many brethren. And whom he foreordained, them he also called. And whom he called, them he also justified. And whom he justified them he also glorified.
[00:44:46] What a wonderful thing. Then there is in this whole matter of election that God, in taking hold of you and me, has separated us. Now, that's what it means to be sanctified. Doesn't mean that you've got to wear black stockings and sort of dress in black and look miserable. There was this idea that went around at one time that somehow or other, the more miserable you looked and the more dowdy and the more totally sort of sickly, the more sanctified and holy you were. And the more pure and lily like you were in the eyes of God. I think we can dispense with that idea of sanctification.
[00:45:25] The fact of the matter is this, that true sanctification is healthiness.
[00:45:32] Healthiness in every sphere. Normality.
[00:45:37] It means, basically, that God has severed the link between you and an old system, between you and an old world, between you and an old creation, between you and an old man or woman.
[00:45:54] And has separated you to a new creation in which all things are of God.
[00:46:02] And isn't that why we have so many problems?
[00:46:06] Because all the time we're falling back on our own resources. Instead of trusting the Lord, instead of proving the Lord, instead of obeying the Lord. We're all the time trying to go back to do it ourselves.
[00:46:21] Some of us spend years manufacturing our own Christianity.
[00:46:27] We are little factories that turn out holy lives.
[00:46:33] But then it's never the real thing. It's like those Hong Kong souvenirs.
[00:46:39] Forgive me, those of you from Hong Kong.
[00:46:42] But it's just like those Hong Kong souvenirs. They just. It's not the real thing.
[00:46:50] Something on the cheap.
[00:46:55] It hasn't been produced by the spirit of God through faith in us and by deep, costly experience. It's something we're trying to sort of build as a kind of facade.
[00:47:08] We hate one another. We imitate one another, and so we go on.
[00:47:17] But what a wonderful thing it is when we understand that scripture in two corinthians, chapter five, verse 17. Wherefore, if any man be in Christ, there is a new creation. Oh, things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new, and all things are of God, who reconciled us unto himself through Christ.
[00:47:41] Now think wherefore, if any man be in ChrIst, there is a new creation.
[00:47:51] Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new, and all things are of God. If we could live on that principle. It's not that you never do the things you did before. It's that you do them in a new wAy.
[00:48:08] You do them on a new principle.
[00:48:11] You now do it with a new energy.
[00:48:16] Abraham's whole life changed from the moment he obeyed the Lord. He suddenly found that whereas before he didn't get pulled over the coals by God for doing things the natural way. Now suddenly he found he couldn't DO things the natural WaY anymore.
[00:48:31] Why, perhaps in ur of the counties. It would have been quite the done thing to take Hagar and have an Ishmael. But now, trouble.
[00:48:41] The trouble's gone on rumbling down through the centuries till this very day.
[00:48:46] It's very interesting for me to receive from certain organization in the MiDdle East. A whole document on the palestinian problem. And to find that the Palestinians call palestine the land of Ishmael.
[00:49:06] It's with us to today. The problem.
[00:49:11] Many others must have had their hagars in ur of the Chaldees. And never got into trouble.
[00:49:16] We don't even know their names.
[00:49:20] Why should poor Abraham do the same thing that a thousand others have done and get into such trouble? Because Abraham was living in another world. That's why.
[00:49:32] That's why, dear child of God. The most miserable person in the world is you.
[00:49:37] If you try to live in the new creation as if you're in the old.
[00:49:41] Oh, you poor thing. You see, the whole problem is this. Let me put it very simply. I'm not just trying to be funny. Let me put it. I feel so sorry for us all, myself included.
[00:49:52] No, you can't help. You see, the Lord's caught us. When the Lord has caught you, you must feel sorry for yourself. Because once the Lord has caught you, you're spoilt for the old world.
[00:50:05] And if you go into the new and try to live as if you're in the oil, you'll spoil the new.
[00:50:12] And that's why christians become, of all people, the most miserable.
[00:50:16] Because they go into the new creation. They try to live as if they're in the old. And then they all the time say, I wish I was back in the old. It was much easier. People didn't judge like that. I didn't get into trouble doing this. And this. And this. Of course not. You try to go back in the old. Once you're caught, you're caught.
[00:50:32] You go back to the old. It'll never be the same. Never be the same again. Because you've seen something.
[00:50:39] And what you have seen has caught you and you are apprehended. You'll never be the same again. Therefore, dear child of God, we have to feel sorry for ourselves. If we're trying to live in the new creation as if we're in the old poor Abraham, he went down to Egypt and said to Pharaoh, my sister.
[00:51:05] And you might say, what a dreadful thing to do. A man of God, a prophet of the Lord, a patriarch.
[00:51:13] But it was his sister, you see. His father was Sarah's father. Only they had different mothers.
[00:51:23] So it was a half lie.
[00:51:26] You know, the kind of thing, a white lie to get Abraham out of trouble. Now there are thousands of people in our other counties. That must have told far, far more than white lies. Never got into trouble.
[00:51:42] But poor old Abraham only has to say to my sister, and what happens? Ferus is very delectable. I would like her in the heart.
[00:51:56] And poor Abraham has to say, it's a great honor, you see, for the sister, it's his sister, great honor. So of course, Abraham has to say, certainly, my lord.
[00:52:09] And in vanishes dear Sarah behind the curtain. Never to be seen by her beloved husband again.
[00:52:19] Now you know what happened. What God did to the whole of Pharaoh's household. How he troubled Pharaoh with dreams and all the rest. Till in the end, Pharaoh called Abraham, said, what is this evil thing that you've done?
[00:52:32] Abraham did exactly the same with Abimelech later on. He didn't learn his lessons like all of us. We don't always learn the first time. When this problem is in us. We go on acting it out again and again until the penny drops.
[00:52:50] But the fact of the matter is, why does Abraham not get away with anything?
[00:52:56] Because Abraham has been delivered from the powers of darkness. And transferred into the kingdom of God's dear son. That means he is under government. He is under the rule of the Christ. He is in some way in touch with the throne. He can't act like he used to before.
[00:53:21] Now all this matter is so tremendous. Because origen determines destiny.
[00:53:28] We've said it so many times here over the years. Origin determines destiny.
[00:53:34] If Ishmael is born of the flesh, Ishmael will end with the flesh. If Isaac is born through the spirit, he will end with God.
[00:53:45] If your christian life began with God, it will end with God. If your experience of the spirit of God began with the spirit of God, truly it will end with God.
[00:53:59] Everything that begins with God has within in it the capacity for going right through to the glory of God. But everything that is self manufactured will in the end be exposed and collapse. It may be the most religious thing in the whole world. It may be the most christianized thing in the whole world. It may be so theological that it would get a degree, degree after degree in any theological seminary. But if it's self manufactured. In the end, it will be exposed. It will not go through, because origin determines destiny. The most beautiful architecture in this world belongs to Babylon. The most beautiful music in this world is part of Babylon. The most beautiful literature in this world is part Babylon. Some of the most magnificent systems and philosophies have come out of Babylon. They will never reach the kingdom of God.
[00:55:08] They began with fallen man. They end with man.
[00:55:13] But what begins with God ends with God. That's why it is so important to learn that wonderful little psalm by heart, psalm 87. His foundation is in the holy mountains of Zion.
[00:55:30] And when the Lord counts up the people, he will say of this one and that one, he was born there in Jerusalem. He, she was born there. They were born here. And it ends up with this lovely little phrase, all my fresh springs are indeed.
[00:55:50] Some people may find that a very strange little psalm, such a jumble of ideas, but it's not a jumble of ideas at all. What it is is this principle being expressed by the Holy Spirit's inspiration in the psalmist. What he's saying is, everything has got to be of God. Everything's got to be of God. And when the end comes, God will sort out what began with him from what did not begin with him.
[00:56:22] Now there's a third lesson. I think we have only time for that this evening, and that is the obedience of faith. The obedience of faith.
[00:56:33] I think most people have heard of this lesson in connection with the life of Abraham. Hebrews eleven eight puts it so very simply. It says, by faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out into a place which he was to receive for an inheritance. And he went out not knowing whither he went.
[00:57:06] Faith means very little without obedience.
[00:57:12] Never forget that.
[00:57:16] Faith means very little without obedience.
[00:57:26] Indeed, it's questionable whether it's real faith at all if there is no obedience.
[00:57:40] You remember what our Lord said.
[00:57:43] He said, there will be many who come to me in that day who shall say, lord, lord, we did this and this, and this now depart from me.
[00:57:55] And then he told a story.
[00:57:58] He said, I will tell you this story.
[00:58:04] The man who hears my word and does them is like the man who digged deep through the topsoil to the rock and laid the foundation upon the rock. And when the storm came and the flood, the house stood because it was founded on the rock. But the man who heard my words and did not do them apparently had faith. But no obedience was like the man who built his house on the topsoil. He didn't bother about the foundation looked the same.
[00:58:39] But when the flood came and the storm and the wind blew, the fall of that house was great because it was not founded on the rock.
[00:58:52] On the other hand, there can be no obedience without true and living faith. Now, this is something that some people perhaps fail to see.
[00:59:04] You cannot obey the Lord without faith.
[00:59:09] If the Lord suddenly came to you and said, get out, get out, out from this country, out from your father's house, out from all your relatives, I suggest to you that unless you had some living faith you could not obey.
[00:59:27] You would be filled with so many problems, so many excuses, so many arguments, so many common sense reasons why you shouldn't do such a foolish thing.
[00:59:41] That unless you had living faith, you couldn't possibly obey the Lord.
[00:59:52] The only way you can obey the Lord is when you've got living faith.
[00:59:57] Abraham obeyed in measure.
[01:00:00] He certainly went out of ur of the Chaldees. And he went out of the whole country to Haran, to upper Syria.
[01:00:10] But he took his father with him.
[01:00:16] I suppose he felt, well, if I've got to get out of my father's house, we get out of father's house. But we'll take father with us.
[01:00:24] He was told to get out from all his relatives. But he thought, well, poor old lot. My brother Nahor has died and lots on his own.
[01:00:36] Poor boy.
[01:00:38] He's a rather comfort loving creature.
[01:00:43] Likes the soft life. He was going to take care for the poor kid.
[01:00:48] We'll take him along with us. I don't know whether it was Abraham who decided or Sarah. I've nothing against women, but I just wonder sometimes whether it could have been Sarah who sort of said, you, Abraham. Now, dear, you just can't do this. I mean I mean, to go is one thing. We've got enough criticism about uprooting everything. But to leave your old father here and my father, don't forget, they shared the same father.
[01:01:19] No in law problems in that house.
[01:01:23] And and then there's lot. Perhaps she thought lot was a dear boy who needed mothering.
[01:01:33] Can't leave lot behind here.
[01:01:36] I've got to take him with us.
[01:01:40] Abraham certainly obeyed the law, but he obeyed him in measure. Now, isn't it true of us?
[01:01:48] The depth of our obedience. Is governed by the wholeheartedness of our faith?
[01:01:57] You see, there must have been good reasons why he should take Tirach with him.
[01:02:01] And why he should take lot with him. There must have been good reasons, but they were not from faith.
[01:02:13] Faith would have said, if the Lord says such and such, such and such and such and such. We do it.
[01:02:24] We don't understand, but we do it.
[01:02:27] I have seen more tragedies in people half obeying the Lord and explaining away what they don't like than in any other realm.
[01:02:43] We take our Tirahs and our lots with us.
[01:02:50] I wonder how many tiros you've got.
[01:02:58] I just wonder how many lots and how many tierers there are in the lives in this room.
[01:03:08] Of course we've seen something. Of course we've heard the Lord. Of course we know that all things have got to be of good. We have obeyed, but we have taken some of our problems with us.
[01:03:24] Tira was a real problem. I don't know how he was a real problem. Sometime I'm going to get down to reading some of a bit more exhaustively what the Talmud has to say on Tirah. But from what I gather, he was a problem. The fact was that Abraham never got into the land till Tira died.
[01:03:45] His problem had to die. And when dear father died and they buried him, then they were able to go. Still, he took lot with him. And most of you know how lot became a problem.
[01:03:58] Lot was an endless problem.
[01:04:00] First of all, he got. He went because of his fun loving nature and his comfort loving nature. He got into the wrong place.
[01:04:10] And then he got caught by some marauding kings and carried off captive with all his wives and all the rest of it. And poor Abraham has to go all the way up to Damascus to fetch him back. Had great problem.
[01:04:23] And then later, of course, Abraham prays the great prayer of intercession for Sodom Gomorrah.
[01:04:39] The point I'm trying to make is when we try to explain what God says to us to our own satisfaction and liking, we generally give ourselves very big problems.
[01:04:57] And the reason we do it is that we have not God living faith of a wholehearted nature. In other words, we are prepared to obey the Lord, but we feel that there are certain things that need qualifying.
[01:05:19] Too harsh. Too harsh? That word from the Lord was too harsh. That was a little bit too extreme.
[01:05:27] Well, just qualify that.
[01:05:30] And unearthingly, always, always, we find that we have provided ourselves with our own greatest problems in the years to come.
[01:05:42] Why? Because God knows best of all what is best for us.
[01:05:55] Faith, the obedience of faith.
[01:06:01] What a grain of faith can do.
[01:06:05] I think there are two things we learn about the obedience of faith in this connection with Abraham, and that is, see how small a grain of faith there was and how tremendous an inheritance it brought Abraham into what grace the Lord had.
[01:06:28] That in spite of his taking Terah with him. The Lord said, all right, all right. You've brought Terah with you. So we wait in Haran till Tirah dies. You brought lot with you. All right. We'll wait until lot chooses the plain, and you'll have to go up in the hills. That's just what I planned anyway, bay, for you to be up in the hills.
[01:06:48] That's what happened.
[01:06:50] But it held up Abraham. But that little grain of faith. If it's a comfort to any of you this evening, you may feel you haven't got a tremendous amount of faith, but you have got a little grain of faith.
[01:07:01] See what it brought Abraham into? It brought him into the fulfillment of everything. In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
[01:07:10] Just that little grain of heaven. You know, it would have been very easy for Abraham if he could have sort of seen and known all that we have seen and known.
[01:07:20] If he was at the end of history instead of the beginning of history, it would be much easier, wouldn't it, for him to have obeyed the Lord? But when he went out that morning from ur of the Chaldees, or maybe it was in the evening, but when he went out from ur of the Chaldees on that historic journey, little did he know that such a simple act of childlike obedience was to bring him into something so immense and so eternal that he'll spend the whole of eternity thanking God.
[01:07:55] One little act of faith brought him into something which is eternal.
[01:08:01] Think of it.
[01:08:03] The whole thing began with that act of faith. And so it is with you.
[01:08:11] When you look back in your life, you will find that some little act of faith that you, of obedience, that you took on some issue that seems so small, has led you into tremendous blessing.
[01:08:26] And likewise think what his unbelief did, too.
[01:08:34] You see, then the Moabites, the Ammonites, children of lot, by his own daughter.
[01:08:47] If he'd only left lot where he belonged, in Chaldea, than the Moabites and the Ammonites could have all been there, far away.
[01:09:00] So it is through all scriptures. One of the most interesting studies, if you want an interesting study, is to trace all the troublemakers in scripture.
[01:09:10] Really, it's a most rewarding study. You will find that they either go back to Ishmael, to Abraham, or Esau, back to Abraham or lot, moab and Ammon. And so you can go on and on. You'll find that it's incredible. You find all these different sort of tribes and groups and peoples that have caused so much problem. You trace them all back to some simple little collapse of faith.
[01:09:42] The word of God puts it like this, or Isaiah put it like this, through the spirit of God. Those that put their trust in him shall never be confounded.
[01:09:57] A life of obedience.
[01:10:00] May the Lord help you and me to obey the Lord through faith, wholeheartedly.
[01:10:11] We havent got quite so long as Abraham. I suspect he had 175 years of life. He was 75 when he left Heian. So we don't quite know how old he was when he left ur.
[01:10:28] But I suspect that we have not quite the same amount of time, maybe only a few years. So, dear child of God, leave your tirah in ur or you're locked in ur.
[01:10:50] You haven't got time to wait for them to die a natural death.
[01:10:58] You see that those things are left behind and move on with the Lord.
[01:11:05] And God will do in you swiftly, deeply and eternally what he wants to do in the time available.
[01:11:17] Shall we pray?
[01:11:29] Dear Lord, we bow in thy presence and we thank thee, Lord, that thou art able to make thy word live in our hearts. Where we don't understand thy word, Lord, thou art able to reveal it to us. But we pray that every one of us may receive something from thyself. And above all, Lord, we may learn from Abraham. Make us, Lord, we pray people of real vision and make us a people who know that we are in that new creation in thy son, where all is of thyself.
[01:12:04] And we pray, Lord, o may we be given grace to be obedient through faith.
[01:12:15] Now, Lord, we give ourselves to thee. Thou knowest the issues in many of our lives. Comfort us, Lord, where we need comforting, strengthen us where we need strengthening, encourage us where we need encouragement, correct us where we need correction. Enable us to settle, Lord, those issues that hold up thy work in our lives and make it so much more difficult for thee to really do in us what thou dost want to do and to do in us as a people what thou dost want to do. So we give ourselves now to thee in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen. Amen.