Text: Hebrews 11:1-2; Hebrews 11:8-16
I remember sitting in her living room. She told me she attended some Miracle Temple in Chicago. Then she asked me: Do you believe in miracles? I said yes and then I quickly added: and you know what is the greatest miracle of all, the fact that you and I can say with a believing heart, I believe, I trust in Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.
Do you realize what a great miracle that is dear friends? That you and I can sing and yes believe: Jesus loves me this I know.” Jesus loves me this I know, not because I always feel it inside. I sometimes feel just the opposite. Jesus loves me this I know, not because I always see his love in my life. Sometimes life seems to say just the opposite. Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. God tells me so in his Word and by a miracle, yes by a miracle, I believe it. I trust that it’s true.
That’s what faith is all about. It’s not seeing is believing. It’s just the opposite. It’s being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
Today we look at one such life of faith, the life of Abraham. And here notice:
FAITH LOOKS PAST WHAT WE SEE AND EXPERIENCE
I. When God promises his blessings
II. When God points us to our eternal home
Abraham lived by his extended family in the city of Ur, what would be Iraq today. How the Lord came to him we do not know, yet we do know he spoke to Abraham. Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you (Gen 12:1) Then the Lord promised: I will make you a great nation. I will make your name great…All peoples… will be blessed through you.
What a wonderful promise, but what a call. What a test of faith! For what faced Abraham? What did he see? Ur wasn’t the greatest place to live but it was home and there lived his family. And now God says to leave. He says to go somewhere he’s never been. And then I imagine the questions: Why are you leaving? It doesn’t make sense. God couldn’t want you to leave your family.
Yet he left. He left with no road map or GPS. He obeyed God’s call. Why? How? By faith. By faith, Abraham when called to go to a place he would later receive as an inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.
Then think about the land, the promised land of Canaan. God promised it would be his inheritance. His family would possess it, own it. But what did he see? Yes, he was richly blessed with flocks and herds and many servants. But the land was something different. There he lived as a stranger, a foreigner. He moved from place to place, living in tents, not ever having a home, not ever possessing the land. In fact, the only land he ever owned was a small burial plot for his wife, Sarah.
Yet he did not go back to his own country. He did not give up on God’s promise even as he said farewell to this life. And why? How? By faith. By faith he made his home there. For faith looks past what we see and experience when God promises his blessings.
But now think of the most important promise. Offspring. Many of them, a great nation. Offspring, one special descendant through whom all nations would be blessed. In other words, a Savior for a dying world of sinners.
Yet what did Abraham see? He saw his own tired old body past the age of making his wife pregnant. He saw a barren wife who had never bore him a child. And then the years went past, twenty four of them since God’s promise to bless him. The years went by and still no son, no offspring.
Yet Abraham did not give up. Yes, he struggled with doubts at times. But he did not give up. By faith he looked past what he saw and experienced. By faith he clung to God’s promises. And by faith he was enabled to become a father.
But even with that son, faith still was necessary. For one son was a far cry from a great nation, the millions that would one day come out of Egypt to possess the land of Canaan. And this one son, Isaac, was not that one special descendant. It would still be many generations before he would be born in a stable in Bethlehem.
Yet by faith, we’re told Abraham greeted these things from afar. To his dying day, he believed in God’s promised blessing. And why? How? By faith. For faith looks past what we see and experience when God promises blessing.
So what blessing has God promised you? He hasn’t promised to bless your family with a homeland and make you a great nation. . Yet he has promised to be with you wherever you go. He has promised that he has plans for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you. He has promised to be your ever present help in time of trouble. To make all things work out for your good. But what do we sometimes see? It might seem that God is like you and me who can forget or go back on the promises we make. But faith knows. Faith trusts in what it cannot see. Faith looks past what we see and experience and clings to God’s promises.
And here is the most important one. Through faith in Jesus and what he has done, we sinners are forgiven and adopted into God’s family. In Christ, you are a child of God. But again, like Abraham, what do we see? Abraham lived long before Christ. We live long after Jesus walked on this earth. Like Abraham, we haven’t seen Jesus. We haven’t seen his miracles. We haven’t seen him after he rose back to life. So what do we see? We don’t see anything do we? We don’t see Jesus and our lives with him can seem not much different than before. Same problems. Same troubles.
Yet, by a miracle of God, we believe. By faith, we go on. And with that faith we look past what might seem to be. We look past it all to God’s Word where we see God’s own Son die for us, where we see him rising in glory on Easter morning. For there by faith we see and know his promises are sure.
But faith wouldn’t be worth much if it just spoke to our lives here and now. This life is a brief moment in time when compared to eternity. Yet God in Christ has given us so much more. A hope not just for tomorrow, and then no more, but a hope forever.
Yet again, what we see does not match up. But that’s where faith comes in. For faith looks past what we see and experience when God points us to our eternal home.
Abraham looked forward to living in another land, another city. And not the city of Jerusalem, not the land of Israel. Rather as the Bible says, the city with foundations whose architect and builder is God, the promised land of heaven. God had given him this hope which is also ours. For God promises that one day we will live in that eternal city where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. We will live the blessed presence of Jesus who loves us and gave his life for us.
And yet what did Abraham see. What we also see. He saw death, not life. He saw a grave which he purchased to bury the body of his life long companion Sarah. He saw a grave which he knew would one day swallow him as well.
Yet by faith in the coming Savior, Abraham could look past what he saw with his eyes. He could look past the tears, past the sadness, as we can. He could look past that grave to what God had for him on the other side. So he could live his life. By faith he could live his life not as a man with time running out, not as a person moving ever closer to a dreadful dead end. No, by faith he could look past what he saw. He could live his life as we can, someone just passing through, and always on the way: to that sweet and blessed country, the home of God’s elect , that sweet and blessed country that eager hearts expect.
Some years ago I was talking to a pastor who shared with me a very sad situation. He described a woman in his congregation who had seen her children grow up to lead terrible lives of sin. They broke her heart. Her husband was gone. And now her health was failing. So she cried. She wondered. She was numb with sadness.
Do you know what that pastor told her? How blessed you are. Huh? How blessed you are he told her and then he explained. He told her that God wasn’t punishing her. Instead he was teaching her something so important for us, his people. What faith is all about… We learned it as children. So simple, yet so profound, Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Amen.