Abraham's Path of Faith

Well, good morning. Okay, so this morning I'm going to talk about verses 18 through 21, but I want to go back and cover the verses that Mike covered. And you're going to say, why do you want to do that, Roger? Well, you know, context, context, context, location, location, location. We've got to get the context right. So I think it's really helpful. And actually, in doing that, this is a difficult section. You can kind of get off on rabbit trails, I think. Hopefully, I can show you the path that I took.

And this is, I label this Abraham's Path of Faith. And Macaulay's always making the, if you listen to Chester Macaulay, and you listen to him online, He always makes, it sounds like J. Vernon McGee, he says, this section of verses is the most, whoa, he says, the most important ones on understanding personal faith. And it actually has some incredible interesting things. There are four, three or four cases where Paul uses the aorist tense to punctuate what Abraham's faith was like and it's really, really amazing.

So this is a cool section. So here are the verses, the first 13 through 17 which Mike covered. And I went through and I looked at, I tried to, what's the big picture here? What's Paul trying to tell us here? I put what I thought was the big picture in view and it's a promise to Abraham. That's the big picture of this passage.

He starts out with the promise, and we're going to define what that promise is. And then he uses some, you know, he uses some it. It's this and it's that. And I, in this translation, which is New American Standard, it doesn't tell you what the it is. And you have to look at the context.

So like down in verse 16, he says, for it, the promise, is by faith. then later on it says that if the promise may be according to grace and then later on in 16b so the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants and then if you look down in 17 we're back to the promise again the promise the father of many nations so the promise to Abraham is the thrust of these these verses here and that's going to kind of lead over into the verses I'm going to cover later but I want to go through several these verses and kind of pick out some points Okay, so let's look at the first section here.

The promise to Abraham or to his descendants. And literally, like the King James uses the word seed, and it's a word for sperm, sperma. That's us, we're the descendants of Abraham, spiritually. And he uses this idea of seed, which I think is really cool. So the promise is to Abraham or to his descendants. So what is the promise? The promise is that he, Abraham, will be the heir of the world.

And he's going to say that in several different ways. And I looked up the definition of heir, and you can kind of take it two ways. You think, well, I'm going to get a bunch of money. I'm going to be the heir of a vast fortune. And that's true in a sense, as believers we will. But this is the heir in the sense that God is looking at Abraham as a father. That's another term you can use, the father of the world, the father of many nations. So that kind of helped.

So this promise And verses 14 and 15 kind of give you more details. This promise was not through any law system. There was no system of rule keeping that could gain this promise. Abraham could not gain this promise through any kind of law keeping. but through a righteousness of faith.

And what's here, what's kind of important here, the New American Standard has the word the in there, and it's not in the original, so there's no definite article, and when that's the case, you can look at it speaking of the character, the character of righteousness.

So I think you could look at it this way. Righteousness only comes by faith in what God has promised. you know and that that fact has been all throughout almost the first this is we're in the chapter four now that fact has become talked about a lot by Paul that righteousness comes by faith alone and I call that the best kept secret It really is. That's the best kept secret of most churches because they try to do everything else but that. It just can't be that easy. You just can't have faith and God will give you his righteousness.

But that's what he says. And Abraham is our poster child. He is the one that God flashed and said, this is the example I want you to see. This is a man who by simple faith gained righteousness. And also what I also learned from this section is that, you know, we think of Abraham's faith in terms of Isaac's taking, you know, sacrificing Isaac, and that's pretty amazing. But I'm beginning to realize that this section, his faith with Sarah on having a child was equally on the same level. Hopefully you'll see that as we go through this. Okay, so now we go to verse 16, we're still kind of reviewing here.

For this reason, it, the promise, is by, or ek, out of faith. It's out of faith as a source, or you could say the promise is only accessible by faith. Part of this best kept secret, right? Faith in God's economy is what he requires for your salvation and for your Christian life. That's what he requires. In order that, it, the promise, may be in accordance with grace.

Another wonderful principle is that grace, that's the only way God operates. He doesn't operate another way. He doesn't say, well, do a little good stuff. No, he says, I only operate under grace, and faith is a mechanism by which you will have access into that. so that the promise will be guaranteed, or if you look at actually firm or steadfast, to all the descendants, the seed, and he talks about two seed of this. those who are of the law and those who are the faith of Abraham.

So we have, it seems like he's speaking of this promise is available to those who are of the law, the Jewish Israelite nation, and all those who are of faith, the church. So he talks about two aspects there. This being a seed can be either those who are of the law or those who are of faith.

Okay, so that's 16. We're kind of going through it pretty quickly. So 17. As it is written, now here's where he puts, rather than heir, he puts father in. As it is written, a father of many nations I have made you. This is a quote from Genesis 17b. But your name shall be called Abraham. This is where he changed his name from Abram to Abraham. for I have made you a father of a multitude of nations." This is also where Abraham was 99 years old and he had basically kind of given up hope, and we'll talk about that later. So this is a comment by Constable, God gave the ability to father many nations to Abraham when he was already dead regarding his reproductive powers. Then another comment, God summoned yet uncreated nations as he had summoned uncreated cosmos, namely with a word.

In this case a promise so I want to I want to spend a little more time in the last part of this verse and let's read the last part of this verse in the presence of him so he as it is written a father of many nations I have made you in the presence of him God Whom he had believed even God who gives life to the dead and calls into the being that which does not exist So kind of remember that, and then I want to kind of hopefully get off track here. I want to go and look at some observations by Merriman, and he addresses that last part of that verse.

Okay, faith was made a condition of the promise. We just went through those verses and kind of showed that. So that the promise would be secured apart from works. the type of faith that Abraham had is the type of faith that the New Testament believer is to have. And next week we're going to go through the last 22 through 25 and that will talk about kind of a comparison between Abraham's faith and what the believer's faith is to be. We'll see more on that topic next week. We now have a characterization of faith in 17 through 25. So we're going to see, what were the components of Abraham's faith? What did it look like?

17a tells us the object of his faith was even God. So as with all faith in scripture, the object is God, right? We put our faith and trust in God. Abraham had information that God wanted him to believe, and he believed it. And we have information that God wants us to believe about our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, but the focus is always God. And it's always in the merits of the object, it's in the merit of our God and our Savior, Jesus Christ. It's who He is. And then the B part of this has these two impossible statements that talks about God's character.

He gives life to the dead. We can see some neat things. So you kind of see this parallel kind of developing. He's bringing life to Abraham and Sarah to have a child, right? And he gives life to us through the Savior. So there's all these parallels that we're going to talk about next week. But that's one of the things that God can do. He gives life to the dead. and he calls into being that which does not exist. I always like to, if someone talks to me about, well, man makes a lot of good things, we can make a lot of great things.

I said, okay, that's fine. Okay, here's the condition. You can have no raw materials, start with nothing, and you make something for me, and I'll be impressed after that, because God is the one that calls things into existence which don't exist. No raw materials, right? No one else but God can do that.

Okay, so here's today's verses. So let me just reread them again. And I know Mike likes this verse. This is a cool section. So he says, Roger, you have that cool section in Hope Against Hope. You know, it sounds really cool. It is cool. Okay, so here's these verses, and this kind of describes, this is a picture of what faith, Abraham's faith journey, if you will. And what we're gonna find out that Abraham's faith and our faith is not free of obstacles. It's not just, well, I believe that, end of story. No, there are difficulties along the way. And it says Abraham considered this, Abraham considered that, Abraham considered this.

But at the end of the day, he believed God, and that's kind of the bottom line. So it says, in hope against hope, he believed, so that we might become a father, so that he, excuse me, so he might become a father of many nations according to that which is spoken, so shall your descendants be. Without becoming weak in faith, he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead, since he was about 100 years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb, yet, But with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised he was able to perform, and that's God able to perform it. He, you know, if you read that too fast, you think, well, Abraham's doing that last part. No, God did that, God performed, not, Abraham performed based upon God's giving him the power.

Okay, so let's get into this. In hope against hope he believed. Boy, you look at that and you think, man, I don't know. Hope against hope, what is that? So actually, I like, here's the case where looking at, you can look at the original text, which is good, and then I like Weiss many times, which he tries to bring out the original text as well, and so I'm gonna use Weiss this time. So he kind of flips it around a bit.

He says, who, meaning Abraham, being beyond hope, upon the basis of hope, believed. Again, who Abraham, being beyond hope, upon the basis of hope, believed. So what does that mean? So what does being beyond hope mean? So I think in this context, it means Abraham speaking, or Paul speaking, of Abraham's human perspective. Abraham, we'll see in this passage, he considered his human, he considered his frailties of himself and Sarah. So he says, from my perspective, it doesn't look good. And this is from Denny of Iowa East.

It was contrary to hope as far as man's nature could give hope. But Abraham, upon the basis of hope, believed. So in terms of man's hope, it was hopeless, right? He looked, and we see the details later on in 19, he looked to himself and said, he says, we can't have a child. We just can't do it, I'm sorry.

You know, it's interesting, I was thinking about just how man looks at man and thinks he's really great and all this stuff. God has determined that man and a woman can only have children for a time period. I was kind of thinking about it. I think, wow, that's interesting.

It's only for a time period. Why didn't he just do it their entire lives? He could have done that. No, he has it for a time period. It doesn't matter who you are. Even back to his time, it seemed like that time period was about the same as today. Maybe a little bit longer, possibly. But when they got to be 90 and 100, I'm sorry, Charlie, that's it. It's just not gonna happen.

So, that is what God has determined. He's determined that, and man can't change it. So man, we're gonna do all these things, we're gonna be different genders, we're gonna do all this crazy stuff. No, but you're not gonna change what God has done. You're only gonna have children for this time period. You're not gonna change that, which I thought was kinda cool. Okay.

So upon the basis of on basis of hope is this really cool word, and it's Elpis in the in the Greek It's a favorable a confident expectation, and this is why I always love and how our brother Hal taught this So well many times when it when the object of your hope is God It's an absolute certainty and boy. That's something to hang your hat on when God is the object of of what your hope is about, we have the hope of eternal life. And there's no question that's going to happen because God is guaranteeing it's going to happen.

So the second hope, upon the basis of hope he believed, he rested, Abraham rested on the hope that God could do what man could not do. God could do the impossible. So let's kind of continue on here. So Abraham believed in the absolute certainty of God's word. And a verse that kind of I thought spoke to that, who through him, Jesus Christ, are believers in God, so that your faith and hope are in God. So our faith and hope are in the absolute certainty of who God is and what he's done.

So going on with the verse here, so we're to the second part after the comma, and hope against hope, he believed, so that, or with a purpose that, He, Abraham, might become the father of many nations. Where have you heard that before? Right? He said all those other verses. That's the promise. That's what Abraham believed. That's what he gave to Abraham based on his faith. According to that which he has spoken, so shall his descendants be.

So, and that comes from Genesis 15.5. He took them out, and this is, Bonnie and I were talking about this, this is interesting. Let me read it and I'll just give you some comments here. He took them outside and said, now look at the heavens and look at the stars. If you're able to count them, and he said to them, so shall your descendants or your seed be. So just think about that.

I don't know, I've heard some astronomers say they can count the number of stars. I don't know, I've heard that. Saw some YouTube thing, probably was bogus, but I don't know, maybe they can't. Anyway, by just thinking about that, boy, that's a big number, right? A number we can't count?

So he's saying, so should your descendants be. It just seemed kind of mind-boggling. Is that hyperbole or, I don't know, food for thought there. It seemed like a number, And Abraham's sentencers would seem to be a finite number. Anyway, maybe I'm going down a rabbit trail here. OK, anyway, something to think about there.

OK, so he promised them that's what was going to happen. So all these things, all these difficulties that Abraham saw, and he considered these difficulties. He didn't just casually say, well, OK, no problem. God can do it. No problem. God can do it. He considered these things. He thought about them. So we're gonna see that next. But here's the kind of corollary. So I'm gonna rearrange this first. Without becoming weak in faith, he contemplated his own body. So let's flip it around. He, Abraham, put it in the subject and verb first, he contemplated his own body. He said, okay, my body, not too good, right?

Got a problem here. And contemplate is to consider, to fix one's eyes upon, and is eras tense. So what that means is eras focuses on the event, point in time. You can't really say the word time, but it's a point, point fact. He considered this in an event.

So Abraham gathered the facts, and he's gonna explain it now, what these facts are. And as he did that, this is kind of the cool part, he took in the facts, And it didn't, he didn't become weak in faith. That didn't, you know, sometimes you think, I get the facts and then, well, God can't possibly do that. That wasn't Abraham. He took in the facts and said, okay, God's gonna do this. So this becoming weak in faith, or not being weak in faith, with respect to faith, so that modifies how he contemplated. He contemplated without becoming weak in faith. Those considerations didn't sway his faith.

So let's just see here. Okay, so now we're going to the last part of the verse. Now as good as dead, since he was about 100 years old, in the deadness of Sarah's womb. So we're going to see here is consideration. So his first consideration was his own body. And this is kind of interesting. The original words were verb tense here. He looked at his body and it says it was as good as dead. So this is literally already having been dead.

And this is this tense in the Greek called perfect, past completed action, with the results into the present. So he looked at his body and said, and what we're going to see here, we actually had in his writings, in his commentary, he described the perfect tense in these words here. This is exciting to me, maybe not to you, but anyway. So he's going to describe the perfect tense here.

That is, so far as his procreative functions were concerned, Abraham's body had died, ceased to function. So that's the start of the perfect, right? Past completed action, his body was dead, it had died. Abiding results was as a result in the condition in which it would stay dead, never to function again.

So that's what Abraham considered, which isn't a very good picture, right? You think, well, he's gonna get all discouraged by considering this. But he didn't. He said he didn't become weak in faith when he considered the facts. So that's what's interesting. Our faith, we may have all kinds of facts that show contrary to what's happening, but God asks us to believe Him in that situation. That doesn't mean we do, you know, crazy things. We don't try to defy the laws of nature, jump out of a building and say, you know, Lord save me. We obey his laws of nature and everything else.

Okay, so this is past complete, he had died, his body had died, and it stayed dead, not to function again. So that's where Abraham was started with. Now Sarah, and the deadness of Sarah's womb. So I didn't have as many things to look at here, but I found three verses that kind of talk to that I think. And the first one is in Genesis 18-11, now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age, and Sarah was past childbearing. So that's one fact, she was past childbearing. And it says in Hebrews 11-11, by faith even Sarah herself received the ability to conceive even beyond the proper time of life. So we see here, there's a certain time, and that is Paul's writing in Hebrews, in Genesis, Moses, that there's a proper time for a woman to bear children.

And then in Genesis 17, 7, and this is where Abraham, this is where Abraham laughs. I hadn't actually been studying this. You know, Sarah laughs, and Abraham laughs too. It's interesting. This was a very difficult time for them, that Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said in his heart, will a child be born to me, a man 100 years old, and will Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child? So all these things, she was past childbearing, beyond the proper time, and 90 years old. It can't happen.

Yet, or but, in contrast to that, He did not waver in unbelief. So he had the facts, he considered the facts, but he didn't waver. And the idea of wavering is to vacillate between two judgments and two opinions. He didn't bounce back and forth. And to be honest, I find sometimes something will come up, and I do vacillate. I get the facts here, and I go, oh, what about this? And I can't decide. Boom, boom, boom. Well, it's that Abraham didn't do that. That's pretty amazing. And we're going to see part of the reason why he didn't do that. So Vincent and Robertson have something to say here. Vincent says this word diakrino is a mental struggle. And I think Abraham did have a mental struggle. I think we see that in things he said. We'll see that shortly.

Now you could translate it, he was not divided in his mind by unbelief. But we do see, so here's a case where he did struggle because Abraham and Sarah, they had a solution to the problem. They had a solution to not having a child, not having an heir. And it was Ishmael. That was their solution. So here's where Abraham says, God comes to him and says, I'm going to give you a child. And he says, oh, that Ishmael might live before you. His solution was Ishmael by his handmaid. God's solution was miraculous birth by Abraham and Sarah with respect to his promise. Did not waver with respect to his promise. So they knew his promise. And that promise is probably repeated in Genesis four, five, six times. He constantly comes back to Abraham and Sarah and repeats the promise again and again. And they're getting older and older and older and older. Well, wait a minute. We're running out of time. I'm running out of time here. I get older and older and older, and we can't have children. That's right. It's gonna have to be God that does something. Okay. So Abraham's focus was God's promise. Okay, but here's what's interesting is, let me just read where we're at here.

Verse 20, yet with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in his faith, giving glory to God. So he grew strong in his faith, and this is this word, it's another one of these events, eris passive, to make strong, so he grew strong in his faith, He was empowered. This was an event in Abraham's life that God did. He gave him strength. Strength is qualified by the word in faith, with respect to his faith. And this is from Wheatst. That is, his faith was strengthened in God to meet the impossible difficulties with a miracle.

Isaac was the result of a biological miracle performed by God in answer to Abraham's faith. The glory would therefore be to God. So what's cool is, as time went on, and they couldn't produce a child, at the end of the day, man could not do it, God had to do it, and God gets the glory. And that's the way God operates.

He wants to get the glory rightfully because He is God. He is the one that's created us. He's the one that saved us. He's the one that should get the glory. So in this case, I wanted to combine this give God the glory with the 21. So give glory to God and being fully assured. This is what Abraham did in response. So God strengthened him, and as man, as we see so much in scripture, when God is glorified, so we glorify God because he has strengthened him. Being fully assured is the idea, to bring to full measure signifies to fulfill.

This, again, it was an Aristotelian, so it was an event in his life, and God did it. He believed, despite the knowledge that God had promised, that couldn't happen naturally. So he believed that even though it couldn't happen naturally, God would do it. That what God promised, he, God, was able to perform.

And this kind of connected, this is where I kind of connected it back up to Abraham with his son Isaac. It says, he considered that God was able, and this is speaking of the fact that when Isaac, when he had to slay Isaac, he considered that God was able to raise people, even from the dead, for which he received back him as a type. So same kind of picture, God was able with Abraham and Sarah to give him a child, and God was able to provide for the situation, the sacrifice of Isaac. Okay, so here's some observations from my Macaulay. Right, first one. And this is what I've been talking about.

God waits until all hope was gone before he fulfilled his promise to Abraham. So we saw like in Genesis 15, there was some hope. They were old, but there was some hope there, it seems like. But when they got to Genesis 17, and Abraham's almost 100, and Sarah's 90, there was no hope. And it seems like in their struggles, they laughed. And I think that's, this can't happen. It kind of showed their frailty, but God remained faithful.

And God told them, even though in the midst of their laughter, that next year I'll come and Isaac, you'll have a son, Isaac. God credited Abraham for such great faith, but consider the following. There are three things I thought Macaulay really did an excellent job here. Here are three aspects, and they kind of come out of looking at the verses we've looked at.

First of all, faith is not without doubt, and the passage I quoted here is one that where a gentleman, his son was demon-possessed, and he asked, and the Lord said, he asked the Lord to heal him, and Christ said, all things are possible, and the man said, I do believe, Lord, help my unbelief. So that's, you know, we do have doubts sometimes, but that's a normal process. Faith is not the absence of doubts, faith is a mastery of doubts, and the perfect person for that is Paul, I think. If you look at his thorn in the flesh, And then the third point is, every saint has doubts.

And that certainly was Paul. And you look at 12.8 in 2 Corinthians it says, concerning this, his thorn in the flesh, I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. So Paul's desire was that this thorn in the flesh leave him. But what God said, my grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. And so Paul's response, for when I am weak, then I am strong. So Paul remained faithful to the Lord, but there were doubts in there, right?

He wanted some relief. And the Lord says, no, you don't need relief. Your faith will be strengthened, basically, by having this thorn in the flesh. You may not agree with God sometimes about your thorn in the flesh. Okay, so let's go on. Faith is not, and this is one that we see kind of abused a lot. Faith is not deciding what we want and then expecting God to deliver it.

Have you ever heard of the building programs for some churches? I know what we'll do is we'll build a brand new church. We'll just start building it and God will provide the funds. Okay, what happens after you get the foundation in and you have no more money left?

What do you do then? That's not the way God operates. You don't decide what you want to do and expect God to give you the, you know, and you hear eloquent, eloquent pastors talking eloquently about how God's gonna provide all these wonderful stuff. No. What you do is, faith is believing his word and walking in it. That's what we're told to do in scripture. Faith is believing God's promise made by God, not by man. Faith is no mere hopefulness, but confidence in his word. Pretty interesting. I really like the fact that faith is not the absence of doubt. Take these three points away today if you can. Faith is not the absence of doubt. Faith is a mastery of doubt. Mastery in the sense that you believe God over your doubts. And every saint has doubts.

That was just such a cool part. Okay, lastly here, I came across this thing by John Bunyan. Actually, Macaulay mentioned it when he was in his message, and then it's in, if you guys have Newell's Romans, This John Bunyan has a contrast between faith and unbelief. He has 23 points. And in the interest of time, I only did 10.

You'll be thankful, right? Okay, but they're pretty cool. And it's a little bit of old English. He was alive, oh boy, a long time ago. 16, 17, 1800s, I don't know, somewhere in there. It's been a while. And Vonnie helped me, brought the English, the present tense and updated it a little bit.

So here we go. Faith believes the word of God, but unbelief questions the certainty of the same. Faith believes the word of God, but unbelief questions the certainty of it. Of the same, I'm sorry. And there are 23 points, so I picked the ones. So if you go look at, you know, Hebrews, you can, I mean, the Newell's Romans, you can find it. So this is the fifth one.

Faith will help the soul to wait, though God defers to give, but unbelief, this is good, snuffs and throws up all, if God makes any tarry. I'll try to read it again here. Faith will help the soul to wait, though God defers to give, but unbelief will snuff and throw up all, if God makes any tarry.

And we can see that, we get, you know, Lord, you're taking too long, it's not working out, where are you? Our brother Hal used to say, the Lord's gone to Hawaii. You're not listening to me, Lord. It's not happening. What's happening here? I want it to happen.

Faith will give comfort in the midst of fear, but unbelief causes fear in the midst of comfort. Again, faith will give comfort in the midst of fear, but unbelief causes fear in the midst of comfort. Interesting. Faith makes great burdens light, but unbelief makes light ones intolerably heavy. Faith makes great burdens light, but unbelief makes light ones intolerably heavy. Faith helps us when we are down. Unbelief throws us down when we are up. So I'm not wondering he didn't try to do it to make him interesting. Okay, let's go on. Five more.

Faith brings us near to God when we are far from Him. Unbelief puts us far from God when we are near to Him. I like that, when we get to chapter 10 of Romans, it talks about how the word is near you, it's in your mouth, it's in your heart. You know, God's word is so available, it is so available, but man, you know, doesn't want it. This kind of spoke to me about that. Number 11, faith puts man under grace, but unbelief holds him under wrath. I have to kind of ponder that a bit.

Faith puts man under grace, but unbelief puts him under wrath. 14, faith gives us peace and comfort in our souls, but unbelief works trouble and tossing like the relentless waves of the sea. By faith we have our life in Christ's fullness, but unbelief we starve and pine away. Faith makes the way of God pleasant and admirable, but unbelief makes it heavy and hard. And then lastly, I like this one. By faith, Peter walked on the water. By unbelief, he began to sink. By faith, Peter walked on the water, but by unbelief, he sank. All right, hopefully that was encouraging.

Actually, next week we're gonna try to make a comparison between, we looked at Abraham's struggle with his faith, we're gonna look at the believer, more focused on the believer. The last four or five verses focus on that. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for our time today. We thank you for the blessings we have, Lord. Thank you for your care for us. In Christ's name, amen.