179 - Abraham's Tests of Faith [B]

Hebrews Lesson 179  November 12, 2009

^NKJ Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.

 I'm already hearing somebody thinking (The Ukraine is shut down not because of the swine flu – they've only had about (I don't know) four or five hundred documented cases of the swine flu, but the regular flu.), "So how in the world can Robby go over there? He'll come back sick."

I've had my flu shot, thank you. I'm immune. God's going to protect me. I come back with the flu every year anyway so why should this year be different? Actually I didn't last year. 

All right, open your Bibles to Hebrews 11 and we will of briefly touch base here on our focal point. Hebrews 11 is dealing with the evidences and evidence of faith in terms of people's lives – evidence of faith in terms of people's lives that faith is the evidence of things not seen, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, Hebrews 11:1. So we see that evidence in terms of how people lived, how their lives changed, how at key points in their life they had the choice to trust God or not. So it's these episodes that are being brought out in Hebrews 11 because it is through their response to God's Word that they pressed forward in terms of their spiritual growth; but also because of the impact of these individuals and their faith in the history of Israel and God's plan and purpose for Israel so that it became a testimony before the angels, a testimony before men and a key testimony in history to God's faithfulness. 

So the event that we looked at last time focused on Hebrews 11:8.

^NKJ Hebrews 11:8 By faith Abraham obeyed

When you trust God or you believe something is true, you simply act as if it is true. That's obedience. If you believe that God says do this or don't do this and you follow suit; then that is because you believe it is true and you're acting as if it is true. That is obedience.

when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.

We focused last time as well on the connection of those words (heir, inheritance, promise) focusing on future fulfillment of a promise that had been made by God and as well as their future possession (That's that idea of inheritance) and trace that through in a summary review of the Doctrine of the Inheritance. 

So Abraham lived his life as well and as did Isaac and Jacob without owning any land other that the cave at Machpelah, which is where Abraham and Sarah were buried. They did not own any land in the land that God promised them. But they were looking forward to that ultimate fulfillment. 

The reference here is to the call in Genesis 12 that Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out, to leave his comfort zone, to leave his family, everybody behind. 

^NKJ Genesis 12:1 Now the LORD had said to Abram: "Get out of your country, From your family And from your father's house, To a land that I will show you.

He had no idea what his ultimate destiny would be at the beginning. 

Then that is followed in the next of couple verses by the Abrahamic Covenant, as we looked at last time, promising land, seed and blessing. Each of those elements later developed in subsequent covenants with Israel – the land, the seed, the blessing. 

^NKJ Hebrews 11:9 By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise;

It wasn't his home. He wasn't considered a native to the population; he was a sojourner. That's the key word in Genesis, the Hebrew word ger and indicating that he was one who just lived and traveled in the land; but he didn't have land (property) to call to call his own. He was just someone who was passing through, looking to something that was future, something that was more important. That relates back to the promise of God used 13 times in Hebrews, 5 times in this chapter. That's the focal point here. The promise was the fulfillment of the land promise given to him and also we're told he waited for the city, which has foundations whose builder and maker was God.

Now tell me where in Genesis we get any information that Abraham knew anything about a future city. It's not there; but there's a lot of information that God revealed to Noah, to Adam, to others in the Old Testament that's not recorded in Scripture. So we know from these kinds of little openings (little hints) that they knew a lot more about future things. Enoch did in terms of prophecy as well. They knew a lot more about futures things and about God's plan and purposes than we can document from looking at the Scripture. They had a clear understanding of much. And Abraham clearly did too. As we'll see in our study tonight he even have a good understanding of the Doctrine of Resurrection which if you listen to liberal scholars, you listen to others, this is not even in the Old Testament. But you know when you have the New Testament to sort of fill out the skeletal revelation that we have in the Old Testament that they did understand these particular aspects. 

So at the very core of Abraham's life, why Abraham is praised is the Abraham Covenant. And Sarah is praised in verse 11 and then on into verse12. 

So I thought it would be good for us to use this as an opportunity to review a couple of key things about the Abrahamic Covenant because this is the foundation. Again and again and again we come back to the Abrahamic Covenant and these unconditional promises that God gave to Abraham.

1. First and foremost, He promised Abraham that through Abraham's descendents God would develop a great nation - that many nations actually would come from Abraham. This is ultimately fulfilled. The nation that is specified is actually Israel; but other nations came from him through Ishmael and through his grandson Esau. You have a large segment of the Arabs in the area around (immediately surrounding) Israel: the Edomites, the Moabites (We studied them in our study on 2 Kings), the Ammonites as well as other Arab tribes. The Ishmaelites blended in with the Midianites. All of these different nations and ethnic groups came from the loins of Abraham all in fulfillment of statements that God made again and again and again, Genesis 12:2 13:16, 15:5, 17: 1,2,7 and then Genesis 22:17 which it is the passage where Abraham is asked by God to sacrifice Isaac. That's the next example that's going to be given of Abraham's life that when God tested him so this whole idea of testing is related to inheritance and the promise.
2. So our second aspect of the Abrahamic Covenant was land described as an actual piece of real estate bordered by the Mediterranean Sea and the River Euphrates covering much of what is modern Syria, all of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and parts of modern Iraq. All would've been included in the original land grant given by God to Abraham. Passages in Genesis 12:7,13:14,15,17. Genesis 15:7-21 is the key passage when the covenant is actually cut and God sacrifices the animals (cuts them in half). Abraham falls asleep and God passes through between the halves of the animals alone indicating that is a unilateral permanent covenant and then Genesis 17:8.
3. The nation promise relates to seed although that specifically is going to be fulfilled in the individual of the Lord Jesus Christ. That whole idea of promising descendents (promising a seed) must be traced back to Genesis 3:15 when God said that the seed of the woman would step on the head of the seed of the serpent and tracing that idea of seed all the way through Genesis. The first provision is seed; second land and the third had to do with blessing. Abraham himself was to be blessed by God and was to be a blessing to those around him. This went into effect immediately as he during his life engaged in various activities that benefitted those around him, Genesis 12:2, 15:6, 22:15-7.
4. God said that He would make Abraham's name great in 12:2. That is specifically in contrast in light of what we studied on Tuesday night with the Tower of Babel incident in the Plain of Shinar. Why did they build the Tower of Babel in the Plain of Shinar? They did it because they wanted to make their name great. So in contrast to the kingdom of man that wants to assert itself and make itself great, you have God saying to Abraham that if he will walk humbly in obedience with God, God promises to make his name great.
5. Those who bless Abraham's descendents (I think I got a phone call right in the middle of editing that point). Those who bless Abraham's descendants will be blessed. Those who bless Abraham and his descendants rather will be blessed. 

^NKJ Genesis 12:3 I will bless those who bless you…

This is the basis for believers treating Jews well and treating Israel well and supporting Israel – not because we believe that everything that they do is right or that the Jewish nation's every decision is right. And if we disagree with national policies of Israel, it doesn't necessarily mean that one is anti-Semitic are going against Israel. It may mean that one has good sense and can think objectively. But that always confuses people when we get into this particular area. 

One of the things that has developed over the last ten years is the attempt by the liberal political left to try to create distrust between what is perceived as a power block that is the evangelical right and the evangelical support for Israel. So the seeds of distrust have been a sewn (or attempted to be sewn) among Jews by constantly stating these myths that the only reason those evangelicals want to support you is because they want to get all the Jews back into the land so that Jesus will come back and when Jesus comes back there's going to be the Battle of Armageddon and all the Jews will be killed. 

"See, so the only reason they want to support Israel is so that all the Jews will get killed."

This has been going on for about ten years. Last year when I went to the AIPAC convention in Washington, that was one of the things that was addressed in a breakout session dealing with the topic of how to understand our evangelical allies. It was handled very well by the panel that was there. And there were a number of rabbis that got up during the question and answer session and said that they had tremendous opportunities (some of them) to speak in evangelical churches, and they had worked with evangelicals in joint projects many times. So they were saying that none of this is true. This is not an accurate statement. 

One lady on the panel said that to be perfectly honest the only reason or the main reason that evangelicals won the support of Israel and support Jews is because in Genesis 12:3 God promised blessing for those who blessed Israel and they just want to be blessed by God. Everyone got a good chuckle out of that.

6. There is also the reverse promise. Those who curse Israel or curse the Jews (those who are antagonistic to Israel) will be cursed. There's a different word used in Hebrew even though both words are translated curse. The first word has to do with treating somebody lightly, not treating them with disrespect. It's not a harsh word at all. It's a rather light word. Those who treat you lightly, those who treat you in a cavalier manner. Then the second word for curse conveys the idea of a harsh judgment.  In other words, those who do not respect you or treat you with respect will be harshly judged. So that is a very, very strong statement in terms of anti-Semitism.
7. God promises that through Abraham all nations, all people, will be blessed. That is ultimately fulfilled through the Lord Jesus Christ who is the Savior of all men. It's not limited atonement; it is unlimited atonement. Jesus died for everybody. The only reason that all are not saved is because there are many who choose to reject Christ and not believe in Him or they never want to know anything about God in terms of negative volition at God consciousness. So they are never saved, but their sins have been paid for by Christ on the cross. 
8. There's a specific promise that Sarah will have a son. This isn't some sort of abstract thing in the distance or it's not going to come about through some sort of surrogate. That's what we had with Hagar, was one of the original attempts of surrogate pregnancy. So Sarah will have a son. It's not going to be through some other wife. This is promised in Genesis 15:1-4 and 17:15-21.
9. God promised Abraham that there would be a bondage of about 400 years that they would not be in the land, and that they would be in slavery. That was fulfilled in the Egyptian bondage. That was promised in Genesis 15:13-15.
10. Other nations would come from Abraham in 17:3-6. That's fulfilled in the Arab states.
11. There was a change of name from Abram to Abraham, Abram meaning exalted father, which could have referred to Abraham's own father (tendency of fathers to name their sons names that would reflect positively upon them). So Abraham could have been named by Tara to reflect upon his own exaltation.  Abraham sounds like the Hebrew words of a father of a multitude. There is often the play on words, puns, paronomasias, what ever you want to call them, in Hebrew. The names don't exactly mean that but they sound like the words that mean that. 
12. Sarai's name is also changed from Sarai, which simply means princes to the princess. That little change in the ending changes the significance of the word and that makes it of broader significance, 17:15. 
13. Then the 13^th point is that there was a specific sign of the Abrahamic Covenant and that was circumcision. The Noahic Covenant had a sign that was the rainbow. The Abrahamic Covenant had a sign, which is circumcision, and the Mosaic Covenant had a sign which was the Sabbath. Not every covenant had a sign, but those three did. 

Now just in terms of review because this becomes the backdrop for understanding Hebrews 11. Now what's important here and I want to take you back to just sort of a general understanding of things, is in Hebrews 11:17. We read:

^NKJ Hebrews 11:17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,

So the offering up of Isaac is specifically stated to be a test of his faith in Hebrews 11:17. Now we know from passages like James 1:2-4 that we are to count in all joy when we encounter various tests because we know that the testing of our faith… There it's not a salvation faith. It's talking about our post salvation faith, our spiritual growth faith - the utilization of the faith rest drill as we grow in our spiritual life. So James 1:2-4 emphasizes the point that we grow through these tests. 

Anything can be a test. A test is simply anytime you have the opportunity presented by the circumstances of life to make a choice in responding to those circumstances by trusting in God and applying what you know from the Bible or doing it your own way. That can mean any kind of situation that we face in life whether they are small or minor (relatively speaking) or whether they are major events. Often how we train ourselves to respond in the minor events, then that sets us so that when the major event occurs; then we have set ourselves so that we don't have to think about it. We are trained to fall into that pattern. If you don't, then when you hit the stress points in life and the external adversity builds up; you're going to fall back on what your normal operating procedure is which is going to be utilization of the stress busters (the problem solving devices of Scripture) or you're going to do it your own way, out of flesh; one or the other.

This morning when I was waking up and trying to work my way through my third cup of coffee and make sure that the upper and lower eyelids were no longer close companions, I was watching an interview on Fox News with one of the police officers that was a first responder on the scene in the shooting that occurred at Fort Hood last week. He had been in the military. He was retired military, I believe. He had served 20 years. He was military police. He had been working. I believe that they were Killeen police officers that responded. They were civilian police anyway. They responded to that event and this was the first time that he had ever the fired, been in a situation where he needed to draw his weapon and fire in the line of duty. 

The interviewer said, "Well, how did you respond? How did you know what to do? What did that feel like?"

He said, "We have been trained so much and going to the range, firing over and over and over again, that it gets into your muscle memory so that when you hit the real situation; you just respond in terms of your training."

And that's what he did. See, if you don't train yourself and discipline yourself to respond to the little seemingly innocuous situations in life where you train yourself to respond biblically every time; then when you hit the tougher adversities and challenges in life; then you fall back to your default position. When you get in the spiritual warfare firefight of your life, it's too late to figure out how to draw your weapon and shoot it. You have to already have that in muscle memory so it just it becomes an automatic response so that you don't think about it. You just respond in light of your training. 

But the training doesn't come from the pastor; the training comes from your mentality (from your mindset) and how you apply what you learn on a day-to-day basis. All the pastor can do is teach you the principles; but you're the one who has to apply them every day when you're driving down the freeway, dealing with some incompetent cashier at the bank or whatever it is. You have to make those decisions. Are you going to be irritable and grumpy and impatient? Are you going to respond in grace and kindness and all of the other attributes that need to be part of our life? Are we going to trust God when things don't go the way they should, when we lose our job, when our investments so south? In all of these kinds of things that hit us, are we going to be maintain that relaxed mental attitude that comes because we know that our life and our times and our circumstances are in the hand of God and we can just then rest and relax and think in terms of well how does God want to use me in this situation now that this has happened. If you're not relaxed from doctrine, then what's going to happen is you're going to hit that situation and you're going to press the panic button and you're going to fall apart. 

Then three days later you're going to say, "Okay, wait a minute. I think I learned something about this in Bible class. Let me go find my notes."

That's a little too late. You've been failing the test for three days. 

So we have to learn about the tests and how God used these tests in Abraham's life. When we went through Genesis, we looked at these in terms of 13 tests that I identified that God used in spiritual advance for Abraham.

Now one other thing I want to remind you of as I look at this is just to help you get this back in your head. I really got this as a core idea in Charlie's Framework series. That is to recognize that how the Bible (the New Testament) uses Old Testament events and people and how the New Testament then connects these Old Testament people and events and situations to key doctrines that are then further developed and further enhanced in the New Testament. It shows the unity of Scripture. 

You're not going to therefore (and I'm really teaching the prep school teachers here) that means you don't teach the life of Abraham where it comes across as some sort of historical or biographical study. How do the New Testament writers under the inspiration the Holy Spirit go to Abraham and use Abraham? 

There are various ways in which Abraham is brought up in New Testament contexts. One is the importance of the Abrahamic Covenant and that's primarily in Galatians 3 and Galatians 4. Also you have Abraham used as the Father of Faith and the one who's justified by faith. He is the picture of justification by faith.  That's Romans 4. Then here in Hebrews the picture is of Abraham as one who grows. We see his whole life in more detail almost than anybody else in the Old Testament. We see his spiritual growth from Genesis 12 to Genesis 22. In those eleven chapters we go through Abraham's life and we see him grow from where he is in Genesis 12 (not trusting God, trying to solve his problems on its own, not really understanding everything, partial obedience) until we get to Genesis 22 and God tells him to kill the promised son and to sacrifice him.

He says, "Yes sir," and heads off without giving it a second thought because he was completely confident that even if he did kill Isaac that God would bring him back from the dead. He was resting and relaxed in the promise to God. So that was more real to him finally than anything else. That's where we need to be.

So just a reminder of this, because it charts our own growth and picks up on that idea of using the Bible to give us a framework for thinking. I also saw a problem with this in the trips we have taken to Israel. In fact I've been working on our travel manual. Arnold Fruchtenbaum has got a great book on the historical geography of travelers. I forget what it's called but it's a travel guide for Israel. It's very extensive, but it's history. It's archaeology, period. Boom! No theology there. You go to all these other Christian travelers' guides to Israel and all these different things you can pick up at the store; they don't differ at all from the travel guides that are written in the secular marketplace. They just give you historical information. You go to Israel. You listen to many pastors and many Bible teachers, seminary professors and they'll take you to a site like the wall, to the Temple Mount, Mount of Olives, Bethlehem, wherever and they'll go through the history that happened there. This is what happened, period. 

The real issue is: why is it important that that happened here? How does that fit in God's plan from Genesis to Revelation? That is when you can then answer the question: why is it important for me to really know and understand this and how does this shape the way I look at and respond to the events of life? That's where you're really taking it to application. 

That's what's really going on there is what Charlie identified in his Framework. Other people called it a couple of other things; but that's what that is that goes. It builds a structure of thought so that you have this biblical framework then that defines and shapes the way you think so that when you encounter circumstances and situations in life, the first thing you're going to do is ask: where do I find the parallels in the Scripture? Who went through something like this? How did they respond? How did they fail? How did they succeed? Then what are the principles from I learned from that for my situation and my circumstance? That's the essence of what Framework is. 

What Charlie realized when he started that series back when he was back in Lubbock back in the early 70's was that he had all these college kids who had some kind of background in the Bible churches or doctrinal churches; but they couldn't put any of it together. They just heard these random disconnected stories in the Bible; but they didn't understand how they connected and once you connect the dots how that then impacts the way you think. So he started developing this approach which was just brilliant starting off with the fact that as you go through the Old Testament, there are key events that are referred to and brought up again over and over again in the New Testament, events that Stephen brought up when he gives his sermon in Acts 7, events that Paul constantly goes to to provide the framework for understanding what he's saying about the cross and the work of Christ on the cross. 

If you don't understand Genesis 1, you don't understand anything about creation. You can't understand Romans 1. If you don't understand Genesis 2, you can't understand Ephesians 5 and the whole doctrine of marriage and the role of men and the role of women. If you don't understand Genesis 3 which is where sin and that the judgment for sin are introduced, then you can't understand that Jesus had to go to the cross. These events (creation and the separate creation of man and woman and the fall of sin) are referred to at key times throughout the New Testament. So you have to learn to think in those terms to build that structure. These aren't just isolated episodes and stories and people that are referred to in the New Testament. There is a divine design in the pattern, why God chooses these believers among the hundreds of other believers that existed in the time from Noah to Jesus. 

1. So Abraham's first test was the test to obey God and go to a new land and leave the family behind. That's the Genesis 12:1-9. This is the first thing that the writer of Hebrews mentions back in Hebrews 11:8.

^NKJ Hebrews 11:8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.

The last thing he mentions in relationship to Abraham is in verse 17:

^NKJ Hebrews 11:17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,

So what I'm going to cover in these thirteen points is what fills out what else happened between the first event and the 13^th event. So the first test was to go to a new land, leave the family behind; and it was only partial obedience. Remember, he took his nephew with him and his father with him. He doesn't leave the whole family behind. He takes them with him. He goes to Haran up in the northern part of Syria now; and he stays there for probably ten or fifteen years until his father dies. Even then he doesn't drop off Lot. He takes him with him and what happens? That creates a problem. We get into Genesis 13 and Lot's herdsmen are having battles with Abraham's herdsmen. There is all this family conflict that comes along because whenever you try to solve the problems in your life with human viewpoint, what happens is you create new problems because human viewpoint never works.

^NKJ Proverbs 14:12 There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.

So human viewpoint may provide a seemingly temporary solution, but it's going to exacerbate the problem and unintended consequences and you're going to be faced with a new battery of problems, which come as a result of those bad decisions. If you extrapolate that to a nation when nations use bad decisions from human viewpoint to solve their problems; then all that happens is it creates a whole new series of problems and those problems make more problems until eventually the house of cards for those nations eventually collapses because it's all built on a fantasy foundation.

So Abraham has partial obedience and it sets up for future problems.

2. Second, a test is to trust God by staying in the land. He had orders from God to go to the land but no orders to go out of the land. So when he got in the land he had a test because all of a sudden the land that was going to provide for him comes under this famine and drought and he decides, "Oh, I have to go solve the problem myself. I'm going to head down to Egypt." Now if you were anybody else in the world, it was okay to go to Egypt to get food. But if you were Abraham it wasn't because God has given you specific revelation that He's giving you this land and the issue is are you going to trust God to provide for you in this set of circumstances? So he failed. He went to Egypt for food without divine authorization, decides he has to lie about his relationship to Sarah because he's afraid. We see a really wimpy Abraham when he was younger: 50, 60, 70 years old. But he was younger compared to how old he lived. It sets up other problems down the line.

3. The third test was the test to treat Lot with grace and generosity when all the all of Lot's employees (all of these servants) are creating problems with all of Abraham's servants. These guys were wealthy. They had huge numbers of men that worked for them. When we get to the next test later on in chapter 14 dealing with the Chedorlaomer invasion when that occurs and that group of the 5 kings sweeps through the southern part of the land of Israel around the Dead Sea and wipes out these towns, plunders everybody, kidnaps a lot of prisoners and heads north; then Abraham is going to decide to go after Lot. But when he does so, he takes several hundred servants with him. So he had a large operation; and Lot had a large organization. When these two organizations begin to fight each other, this was extremely unpleasant and Abraham's was obviously (probably) larger than Lot's. He was the older. He was the one who had the primary wealth and so he could just squashed Lot like a bug; but he deals with him very graciously and generously offers him any part of the land. This is the land that God gave to Abraham. He didn't give it to Lot. So he offers this to Lot. 

He says, "You pick the land you want to go to."

Lot picked the most beautiful land, the most well-watered land. It's not that way today; it's all desert and barren. But then it was. So he passes this test by handling the people testing with Lot in grace and generosity, grace orientation. He's trusting God for the land; God promised it to him so he is able to relax and be generous.

4.  There's a test to protect and defend his neighbors. What as he supposed to do? He was to be a blessing to all. That was a command in Genesis 12:3. It doesn't say you be a blessing. It's not a description. It is a command that he was to bless those around him. So when the Chedorlaomer invasion occurs and they come down and they wipe out these towns and steal everything, kidnap the people and haul them off into captivity, he organizes all of his men and he goes after them. He exercises the initiative and he defeats them and obviously he's trusting God in the midst of all of this to provide him the victory. He defeats these kings, rescues Lot and rescues all of the plunder and all of the material goods that had been stolen and returned everything to its original owner. 

In the process he has another test, which is to express gratitude to God. After he has a great victory is he going to become puffed up in arrogance, think about how great he is, what a great victory he's had over this organized army or whether he's going to be humble and express gratitude to God which is what he does. He passes the test and he gave of that which he rescued. He gave a portion to Melchizedek. So he passes the test.

6.  Then the sixth test was a test to quit worrying about when God's going to provide for the seed. God promised you a seed from your own loins. Just relax. It'll happen when of God's timing comes along. Don't push it. God gives him a promise at the beginning of Genesis 15 in the first verse, where God says:

^NKJ Genesis 15:1 After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, "Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward."

There's your promise. What's the promise going to bring? A reward; an inheritance. Notice the connection between those ideas. Then it's in that chapter that God is going to cut the covenant, formally institute the covenant with Abraham by laying out the sacrifices, splitting them in two, causing a deep sleep to call on Abraham. Then God alone passed between the sacrifices. So Abraham passes that test.

7.  Then in the seventh test, he is going to fail. He failed miserably with consequences that reverberate down through time. 

This is when Sarah came to him and said, "You know I'm getting too old to do this baby thing, but you're still functional. Why don't you take my handmaid Hagar?"

So we have another human viewpoint solution, which always generates more problems. We still are faced with the problem of the Arabs and the whole Arab-Israeli conflict. He failed; He listened to Sarah, but later there is spiritual growth on Sarah's part. That's what we come to in the next couple of verses in Hebrews 11. 

Hebrews 11 we see the evidence in Sarah. 

^NKJ Hebrews 11:11 By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.

Now isn't that an odd phrase? Women don't produce seed. Men produce seed. Women produce an egg. But the term is used because it connects the dots of the seed terms from Genesis 3:15 all the way down to Jesus. 

^NKJ Hebrews 11:11 By faith Sarah herself also received strength

This is referring to the fact that God miraculously restored her physically so that she could reproduce. He restored her reproductive organs. And I have heard a medical doctor talk about this. All that would be involved in this because when a woman has gone through menopause and all the things that happen to the womb and the ovaries. Everything dries up and it doesn't produce eggs anymore, and everything is shot. What is necessary for God to do in order to enable her to be pregnant is miraculous. He's has got to bring all of that, all those mechanisms back to life and restore them. And it's much more than "poof" you're pregnant. There's a whole thing that has to be restored there because the dried up womb can no longer stretch in order to provide for the growth of the baby inside. So all that has to be changed. It's just a great picture of how God can bring life where there's death. All of these ideas point towards what God can do spiritually in terms of regeneration and bringing spiritual life where there is spiritual death. 

^NKJ Hebrews 11:11 By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.

She is trusting in the character of God and focusing on the promise that He had made to Abraham and that God would fulfill that particular promise. That takes us back to Genesis 17:16-19. This is where God is speaking to Abraham, telling him that the seed is going to come through Sarah. 

^NKJ Genesis 17:16 "And I will bless her and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be from her."

^NKJ Genesis 17:17 Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed,

He's not laughing because he doesn't believe God. He's laughing from joy.

and said in his heart,

There's a little skepticism there.

"Shall a child be born to a man who is one hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?"

Can this really happen? He's not really doubting God. It's beyond his comprehension. 

^NKJ Genesis 17:19 Then God said: "No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac;

Meaning laughter. 

I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him.

So that goes on. The Abrahamic Covenant is going to be reiterated several times in Genesis in terms of Isaac, in terms of Jacob, in terms of Joseph as well.

Then in Genesis 21:1-3 we have the immediate event of the birth described.

^NKJ Genesis 21:1 And the LORD visited Sarah as He had said,

This is the backdrop for what we understand in Hebrews 11:11. The Lord visited Sarah as he had said.

and the LORD did for Sarah as He had spoken.

The promise is fulfilled precisely, not just generally, not just in some sort of vague spiritualized sense. But literally and physically there is a birth. 

^NKJ Genesis 21:2 For Sarah conceived

She's been strengthened.

and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him.

 See the whole issue was trusting God to do it in the right timing. 

^NKJ Genesis 21:3 And Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him -- whom Sarah bore to him -- Isaac.

That's the fulfillment. Hebrews 11 is not just focusing on Abraham and his faith; but also Sarah's faith, that she grew spiritually through these tests as well, specifically related to the promises of land, seed and blessing that God had outlined in the Abrahamic Covenant. 

The 8^th test was a test to be circumcised. I'm not going to go into descriptive details, here but when you're about 90 ninety years old and you don't have anesthesia this is not something I am sure Abraham looked forward to. This was described in Genesis 17:1-25 and Abraham passed the test.

Then the 9^th test was a test of hospitality to his visitors in Genesis 18. In the first 15 verses the three strangers come to Abraham's tent. He sees them coming and the test is how's he going to respond to strangers. He's going to respond to them out of grace and generosity and hospitality. He wants them to come in, rest, relax, and take a nap. He goes out and physically finds the calf that he is going to cook for dinner. He doesn't go down to HEB or Rice Epicurean or Central Market and pick up a to-go meal or call Pappadeaux's. He goes out to the field, gets the calf or bullock, brings it in, slaughters it, skins it, butchers it, comes and prepares a meal from scratch. This is going to take several hours. Those of you who've been deer hunting and you're your own butchering you know what I'm talking about. It doesn't happen quickly. So they're there for quite a while and he is going to give them the best that he can. He is going to be generous with them. This shows his grace orientation to those visitors and in the course of that time he will discover, God will allow him to see, that it is the angel of the Lord  (One of them is the pre-incarnate lord Jesus Christ. The other two are angels). 

So as he discovers that he has another test. What is she going to do now and ask for when he has the Lord sitting at dinner? What would you ask for if the Lord was sitting at dinner? 

"Well, Lord I want to make sure my job stays, I don't get laid off. Why don't you cure me of this or cure me of that?"

We often fall back on a self centered response. But that's not Abraham. He's passing the test. He is oriented towards others and so his question is – what are you all doing? He finds out the two angels are going to go off to judge and destroy Sodom.

So he says, "Well Lord, would you destroy the city if there were twenty righteous men there?"

"I don't know."

"Well, if there were ten? 

He works it down and he's building a case with God. This is has implications for prayer life, building a rationale based on doctrine, based on grace on the basis of which he can present a case to deliver Lot and his family. He shows grace orientation to Lot who had done nothing to deserve it; and he shows his impersonal love toward Lot and he focuses on Lot's deliverance even though he's living down there in sin city Sodom.

Then in point 11: the test to protect the seed during his visit to Gerar. This is the land of the Philistines, the area along the coast there, the Gaza Strip today.  He goes there and once again he pulls the same stunt. So we have patterns. You just keep committing the same sins you ever did. Don't get self righteous with Abraham just because it's twenty years later. He's still trying to lie about Sarah and pass her off as his sister. We all have the same patterns of sin in our life and we keep failing again and again and again. But God deals with us in grace. So he tries to pass off Sarah, and he fails this test. But God intervenes to protect the seed to make sure that no one gets the idea that it was someone other than Abraham who's the father of the soon to be born Isaac. 

Then the 12^th test was to protect the heir. Now that Isaac's born, what are we going to do with Ishmael and with Hagar, because there's going to be jealousy and other problems in the house with these two boys jockeying for favor? God gives him the guidance which again through (this time) through his wife. 

She says, "You know we ought to send them away."

He recognizes the wisdom of that and he sends Hagar and Ishmael away. He passes this test because he understands he has to protect the seed. So he's finally getting the point that God is going to do what God promises He's going to do and that God has the power to control the circumstances and it's not up to us to try to manipulate the situation to get God's promises fulfilled. This means he finally gets it so that when God sends him to sacrifice the promised seed in Genesis 22 and to take His Son (His only Son) and to take him to the mountains of Mariah and to sacrifice him there.

Abraham says, "Sure thing. I'm packing my bags. We're on the way."

It's in Hebrews though that we come to understand when we get down to verse 19 that Abraham concluded that God was able to raise him up even from the dead from which he also received him in a figurative sense. The point is that Abraham clearly understood the whole Doctrine of Resurrection and knew that God could raise Isaac from the dead because He would have to in order to fulfill His promises because he finally learned God always fulfills His promises. He never breaks His Word and you can always trust Him.

This then is the backdrop for our study on the Hebrews 11:11-12. This leads into the conclusion. At this part there's an immediate conclusion in this section, verse 13:

^NKJ Hebrews 11:13 These all died in faith,

Who are the "these?" The "these" takes us back to the examples that he has talked about already: Abel, Enoch, Abraham and Sarah. They all died in faith; Isaac and Jacob as well, which he had mentioned in verse 9. 

not having received the promises,

What promises? The land promise, the seed promise, and the ultimate fulfillment of those. 

but having seen them afar off

God gave them just a tantalizing hint of what that fulfillment would be like. 

were assured of them,

They were confident in God. Faith is that confidence we have in God. 

embraced them and

That is the promises.

confessed

That is admitted.

that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

They weren't disengaged from the earth. They were involved in commerce. They were involved in trade. They were involved in all kinds of things; but they still recognized that that wasn't the ultimate end. The ultimate end has to do with the heavenly citizenship, the heavenly destiny, not the earthly destiny. 

^NKJ Hebrews 11:14 For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland.

How did they declare it? They declared it by their obedience; by the way faith changed the way they lived. 

So verse 15:

^NKJ Hebrews 11:15 And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out,

That is Ur of the Chaldeas. 

they would have had opportunity to return.

They could have gone back. That's what that's saying – if they'd wanted to. But they didn't because they were focusing forward and not backward. 

So conclusion, verse 16: 

^NKJ Hebrews 11:16 But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country.

They've had their priorities changed by the Word God.

Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.

So we'll come back next time, look at a couple of ideas that are inherent in this in terms of earthly responsibilities and heavenly destiny. Then we will press on into the next section of Abraham's life dealing with the tests with Isaac. 

Let's close in prayer.  

Illustrations