Faith for the future

Good evening. Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, please give us, as you gave to Abraham our father in the faith, ears to hear your word, and hearts ready to obey. In Jesus name. Amen.

My title is ‘Faith for the Future’, and in our journey through Hebrews 11 we’ve got to Hebrews 11.8-16, and the example of the faith of Abraham and Sarah.

How many keys do you carry? When I was a boy I always wanted more keys. They made me feel so important. Nowadays I tend to be loaded down with them. And I wish I had just one. Well there all kinds of keys to life on offer – from the right deodorant to the right pension to the right car. But there is only one master key that works and it is faith. Abraham is the prime example of faith. For the Hebrews, he was their great ancestor, the father of their people. The suffering Hebrew Christians to whom this letter was written were tempted to give up on the hard road they were on and turn back to Judaism. They needed to know that what makes us part of the people of God is not a shared ancestry, but a shared faith and the New Testament is clear that Abraham is the father of faith. But what is faith? Back in Hebrews 11.1 we heard this definition:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

So note this, we do not see the object of our faith. Faith is the spiritual equivalent of what eyesight is to the physical world. Only it is far more important. Lack of eyesight is certainly a great inconvenience, but people work round it. Faith is crucial for our eternal destiny. Now I want to draw out three points about faith from these verses:

Firstly, FAITH IS THE KEY TO CONTENTMENT

Hebrews 11.8-9a:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land…

What can we see of how this faith worked out in Abraham’s life? One point we must not miss is that Abraham was called. True faith (the master key to life) does not begin with us but with God. Why have those who were baptised this evening come to faith in Christ? Is it because they decided for themselves to go on a quest for God? No! God called them. If you’re a believer, God called you. Then Abraham’s response to the call was obedience. He obeyed and went. And obedience begins with listening, and taking to heart the word and the promises of God. A wife says to her husband “You never respect what I say to you.” The husband says back to the wife “Don’t talk rubbish.” We find it only too easy to behave in that kind of way towards God. But faith, which begins with listening, must be put into practice or it is nothing. The heart comes first. We will not live by faith unless first our heart is right with God. But then with the Holy Spirit’s help obedience must follow. The writer G.K. Chesterton once made this comment on the morality of the famous philosopher Bertrand Russell:

He treated the Ten Commandments like one of those exam papers, which have at the top: ‘Not more than six of these should be attempted’.

We may laugh. But I wonder what our own recent score is. Abraham went out (Hebrews 11.8):

…not knowing where he was going.

He trusted without knowing the route. But he did know his destination (Hebrews 11.9-10):

By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

He was not prepared to be content with anything less than that. A patch of land in what we call the Middle East was just a staging post for him. He would not settle until he had reached the heavenly city, but he was content to let God take him step by step. He had to leave much behind. Ur was a great city. It held everything that was familiar to him. And he exchanged it for tents. So what about us? Is it enough for us that Jesus is Lord? Are we content with that? This is exactly the lesson that the apostle Paul had learned, about which he wrote to the Philippians (this is Philippians 4.11-13):

I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

Paul, like Abraham, knew how to trust God and leave the rest to him. Is that true of us? Are we ready for unreserved obedience without knowing by what route the Lord will take us, and however hard the road? Faith is the key to future-focused contentment.

Secondly, FAITH IS THE KEY TO A FRUITFUL LIFE

Hebrews 11.11-12:

By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered im faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.

Abraham, and Sarah with him, were given a promise about what God would do through them. He would give Abraham a land; make him a great nation; and bless the whole world through him. And God repeats the promise again and again in case Abraham forgets. Genesis 13.16:

I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.

The dust of the earth! Try counting that! Genesis 15.5:

And [God] brought him outside and said, “Look towards heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

Abraham believed the promise. And it has happened! Not because Abraham was faithful, but because God is faithful. Sarah could no longer conceive a child. But what is that to God? Faith is all about what you cannot see, but what God says is true. It is not about what we see now before our eyes. We may be confined by our circumstances, but God is not. Just think of the fruitfulness of Abraham and Sarah. The whole nation of Israel, from which Christ himself came. And the millions of spiritual children of faith. Including me. And if you too are trusting in Jesus, including you. And what about us? Do we want our lives to be fruitful? Do you want a life that counts in eternity? On our own we are nothing. But faith is the key to fruitfulness. And as Christians we inherit the same promise that was given to Abraham. Revelation 7.9 describes:

…a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne [of God] and before the Lamb …

By faith we find our place in God’s plan to bring that about. Faith is the key to a fruitful life. A life that counts.

Thirdly, FAITH LONGS FOR THE LIFE TO COME

The goal of our faith is never what we experience here and now. It is true that our faith can look back to Christ in a way that Abraham’s never could. In time, he could look back to God’s fulfilment of his promise of a son to him and Sarah – but we have a far greater fulfilment to look back to. Our salvation has been secured once and for all by the death and resurrection of Christ. We can and we should rejoice in what Christ has done for us. But we have not yet arrived where Christ is taking us. We never graduate from the school of faith in our Christian lives. The heart of the Christian experience is living by faith. That’s how it begins. That’s how it ends. We don’t know the route. But we do know where we’re going. The evangelist Billy Graham was once visiting an American town, and he needed to ask a young lad the way to the Post Office. He thanked the boy for his directions, and then said “If you come to the Baptist Church this evening, you can hear me telling everyone how to get to heaven”. The boy said “I don’t think I’ll be there. You don’t even know the way to the Post Office!” But Billy was right. Heaven is where we’re headed.

There was an American missionary couple who were returning by sea to America after many long hard years of missionary service abroad. They happened to be on the same ship as the U.S. President who was returning from a holiday. When the ship landed there was all the razzmatazz to greet the President – crowds and flags and brass bands and speeches. Not a single person came to meet the missionaries, and the husband found himself praying bitterly to God:

Lord, after all we’ve done, does nobody care? Is there nobody even to meet us off the ship now that we’ve come home?

But he was stopped short because he felt God saying to him “”But this is not where you belong, my son. You’re not home yet”. Hebrews 11.13-16:

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

Have you begun to grasp by faith the inheritance that awaits you? It is such a tragedy if Christians go through life with bitterness and dissatisfaction in their hearts because they simply have not understood what God has in store for them and that they must patiently wait. Abraham never stopped looking to the eternal horizon with the eyes of faith. And God did not let him down. Nor will God let us down. Unless Christ returns first, God’s plan for us is that we too should die still living by faith. We need to determine to learn the lesson from Abraham, and consistently to long for the life to come. So will we live by faith? A few weeks ago we were in Cornwall. I was reminded of an earlier holiday we had down there. I popped into an old village church we were passing. On the wall there was a memorial that caught my eye. It commemorated three young men from that village. They were all called John, and they were all fishermen. In 1850, when they were all 21, they sailed with Captain Allen Gardiner as part of his crew on a missionary expedition to Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of South America. They wanted to take the good news of Jesus to the native peoples there. They got there, but after great hardship and suffering, everyone on the expedition died, including the three Johns. What happened to them became known, and their diary was found, and it was the direct inspiration that lead to the founding of the South American Missionary Society, and all the spiritual fruit that followed.

I was very moved and challenged by this self-sacrificial living by faith of three otherwise very ordinary and very young men. I wanted to copy the wording on the memorial but didn’t have time. When I got home, I emailed the church to ask them to send me a copy of the memorial text. They kindly did that, and I exchanged messages with a lady member of the congregation who had written their booklet on the church’s history. A comment she made struck me forcibly. She said that she admired the zeal and devotion of the three Johns, but couldn’t help being saddened by what had happened to them. They had been so naïve. They hadn’t realised what they’d been letting themselves in for. Implication: if they had, they’d have stayed at home in Cornwall and been safe. Secure.

That summed up for me why the Church in the West is making so little impact. We put security before sacrifice, and a life of comfort before a challenging life lived by faith. We have lost our vision for taking the gospel to the ends of the earth, whatever the cost. We have eliminated bold risk-taking from discipleship and settled for being sensible. But that’s not what Jesus demands of us. Jesus calls us to put our lives on the line for him, because we have a sure and certain eternal future. Jesus calls us, like Abraham and Sarah, to live by faith. Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, thank you for the faith that you gave to Abraham, and to Sarah. Thank you for your promises given to them and to us. Help us by your Spirit to take hold of those promises and to be content to follow the Lord Jesus wherever he leads us. Thank you that in you our lives have significance. Please use us for your purposes and make us fruitful for your kingdom. And help us to keep our eyes fixed on that glorious future eternal home to which you are taking us. In Jesus name we pray. Amen