Home thoughts from abroad.wordpress.com

By an act of faith, Isaac reached into the future as he blessed Jacob and Esau.

Faith not only has sight (seeing is believing), it also has foresight. Sometimes it gets glimpses of the future. On occasions a person may have more than a glimpse – more like an open window into the future God is preparing for them, or for others (as was the case here).

When God reveals something to you, there may come a time to appropriately speak about it in the presence of others, but great sensitivity to the Holy Spirit is required. However, it is never inappropriate to talk to God about what you believe He is showing you. When, or if, it becomes time to tell someone else, He will impress it on your spirit.

Meanwhile, we do well to be like Mary, and treasure ”up all theses things and” ponder them in our hearts (Luke 2:19)

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, ¹⁸ even though God had said to him, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’ ¹⁹ Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.

Faith sacrifices.

It was one of those moments you don’t forget. It is etched on my memory. I was sitting in a morning Bible study, in the big top at ‘Spring Harvest’, a Christian festival. This was many years ago and I was a young man in my early 20’s. The speaker was talking about Abraham and Isaac. ‘God never wanted Isaac,’ he said. ‘He wanted Abraham; and when He knew He’d got him, He gave Isaac back!’ That resonated with me, and it’s a principle I’ve seen work out in my own experience more than once through the years.

Faith sacrifices, and sometimes has to be willing to sacrifice its very best.

But faith also believes in the God of resurrection, and He has remarkable ways of bringing back from death what we place on the altar. It doesn’t always happen, and, at the front end, we have to sincerely let go of anything God is asking of us, being prepared to sacrifice it all. However, in the purposes of God, ‘Isaacs’ often make a come-back.

All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. ¹⁴ Obviously people who say such things are looking forward to a country they can call their own. ¹⁵ If they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back. ¹⁶ But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. (New Living Translation).

In an article for ‘the Spectator’ entitled: ‘Now I’m 64: my tips for aging’, Julie Burchill quoted the philosopher Camus who said, ‘In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.’ I think many Christians will identify with this, even though they may find themselves in the ‘winter’ season of life.

I clearly remember one Friday, just a few years ago, when I was visiting Studley Royal, a beautiful deer park next to Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire. Although I don’t normally tend to be this way, on that morning I was for some reason feeling a bit down about getting older, and maybe just a little depressed at the thought of death.

Then I went into your sanctuary, O God… (Psalm 73:17).

We went inside the beautiful church building at Studley and I saw something there that spoke to me of heaven. I can’t remember exactly what it was. I believe it may have been a verses from one of the the psalms. But it brightly illuminated the gloom within, and I left that church with an altered perspective. The ‘invincible summer’ broke through into my wintry thoughts and feelings.

I believe God wants all who trust in Jesus for salvation to know – to know deeply – that there is nothing to fear. Jesus always keeps the ”best” wine until last (John 2:10).

(By the way, it was Albert Camus who said, ”I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live as if there isn’t and die to find there is.” Now there’s a thought!)

 Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted. But they were after a far better country than that—heaven country. You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them.

We have noted before that ”better” is a key word in Hebrews. It is used many times (1:4; 6:9; 7:7, 19, 22; 8:6; 9:23; 10:34; 11:16, 35, 40; 12:24). It can also be translated ”superior”. Everything about Jesus and all He brought in is ”better” than anything enjoyed under the Old Covenant.

In today’s reading we run into the idea of a ”far better country”.

My mum was a big fan of the country singer Jim Reeves. I remember she had an E.P. (45 rpm!!) of Jim singing:

”This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through,
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue;
The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door,
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.”

I think it is fair to say that the heroes of faith described in Hebrews 11 lived in something of that spirit. When they died, they were still believing that God had something ”better” for them.

It takes me back in thought to the C.S. Lewis quote we considered recently:

”If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.”

Tim Keller said: “All death can now do to Christians is to make their lives infinitely better.” This is Biblically true.

Following Tim’s death in May of this year, Carey Nieuwhof shared certain insightful observations. Here is one that stays with me:

”David Kinnaman and I interviewed Tim in 2021, a year after his pancreatic cancer diagnosis. I asked Tim what he was thinking about day-to-day in light of his diagnosis.

Tim’s honest answer is worth reading and re-reading:

I would say that as a man who was 69 years old, I actually was pretty unfocused because the reality is it doesn’t matter whether you have cancer or not. When you’re approaching 70, you should actually know the time is short. You don’t really have decades anymore. You’ve got years anyway.

And so I should have been more focused, but I was tending to do whatever anybody asked me to do….You’re a nice person, you’re a minister. So you do whatever anybody asks you to do.

And I had no focus. I really didn’t. I wasn’t saying what do I really —if I finally had one year left, two, three, four, five years—what should I be doing? I didn’t have that focus. Now I do.”

All these people were still living by faith when they died. 

These words remind us of the inevitability of death. ‘Death is the ultimate statistic: one out of one dies.’

But they also speak to us regarding the invincibility of genuine faith. It does ‘keep right on to the end of the road.’

As we have seen repeatedly, these Hebrew Christians were tempted to ”shrink back” (10:39). Under the pressure of persecution, they felt the pull to return to the old Jewish religion, and they needed to be severely warned about the spiritual danger they were in (e.g. 10:26ff), and to be exhorted:

”You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised” (10:36).

Jesus warned of a coming time when, He said:

”Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will wax cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:12,13).

” Integrity is built by defeating the temptation to be dishonest; humility grows when we refuse to be prideful; and endurance develops every time you reject the temptation to give up.” Rick Warren.

PRAYER: Lord God, please help me to keep walking by faith and not sight until that day when faith becomes sight.

And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. ¹² And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

The highlighted words above show that Abraham and Sarah were facing double-trouble. It wasn’t just Sarah who was infertile. They were both biologically incapable of having children.

One of the celebrated heroes of the Christian faith said,

‘The borderline of human helplessness is the borderline of divine miracle.’

‘Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees
And looks to that alone;
Laughs at impossibilities
And cries: It shall be done!’ Charles Wesley

‘Got any rivers you think are uncrossable?
Got any mountains you can’t tunnel through?
God specializes in things thought impossible
and he will do what no other power can do…

…God is the same and his word is dependable
He’ll make a way through the waters for you
Life’s situations by him are amendable
Mountains and hills he will part for you too.’

“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness
    and who seek the Lord:
Look to the rock from which you were cut
    and to the quarry from which you were hewn;
² look to Abraham, your father,
    and to Sarah, who gave you birth.
When I called him he was only one man,
    and I blessed him and made him many.” (Isaiah 51:1,2).

This is an example of what can happen when God’s promise and power encounters our barrenness at the borderline.

And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. ¹² And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

I read a book some years ago that described prayer as ‘invading the impossible.’

”…even Sarah…”

Here is another thing faith does: it enables.

It enables the miraculous (11).

But note that the miracle is not so much attributed to the believer, nor to her belief, but to the One believed in. Nevertheless, she played her part. We must not miss this.

It is God who is ”able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20: see verse 12 and Isaiah 51:1,2). But it is ”according to his power that is at work in us…”

It is God who does the ”immeasurably more”;

It is ”his power” that is operative;

Nevertheless, Sarah had her believing part to play (and so do we), and play it she must (and so must we).

But the glory rightly goes to the great miracle-Worker: ”to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen” (Eph.3:20).

So the prayer of faith invades the impossible. But we are not to take this passage to mean we can have any random miracle we pluck out of mid-air. Faith lays hold of what God has said (promised). It therefore has rock upon which to stand.

 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. ⁹ By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. ¹⁰ For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 

Faith goes.

If God shows the way, faith is willing to go.

He was probably in his mid-70’s when he went out from his own country. Sarah, his wife, was also elderly. We are never too old to be used in God’s purposes, if we are willing to step out with Him.

Martin Luther wrote:

‘In the first place, it was hard for him to leave his native land, which it is natural for us to love…Furthermore, it is hard to leave friends and their companionship, but most of all to leave relatives and one’s father’s house.’

It is probably hardest of all to leave behind the secure known in advanced years, when every instinct fights to stay with the known and with perceived comfort and safety. But what Abraham and Sarah would have missed if they had remained in their own land! What we would have missed!! So much hung on their going.

Calvin comments on Abraham’s obedience that the patriarch ‘did nothing that was not by the command of God. This is surely one of the principles of faith that we do not move a step unless the Word of God shows the way and shines before us like a lantern.’

It is important to point out that, for all these heroes of faith, although they had great adventures with God in this world, they were strengthened, encouraged and motivated by the hope of the next.

C.S. Lewis observed, “If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.

It was by faith that Noah built a large boat to save his family from the flood. He obeyed God, who warned him about things that had never happened before. By his faith Noah condemned the rest of the world, and he received the righteousness that comes by faith. (New Living Translation).

By faith, Noah built a ship in the middle of dry land. He was warned about something he couldn’t see, and acted on what he was told. The result? His family was saved. His act of faith drew a sharp line between the evil of the unbelieving world and the rightness of the believing world. As a result, Noah became intimate with God. (The Message).

Faith works (see James 2:14-26).

Faith does certain things in response to what God has said or shown.

It regularly acts in daring and surprising ways.

‘Noah is a splendid example of the attentive believer, eager to hear what God is saying and ready to do what he commands…God said it, so Noah did it.’ (Raymond Brown: ‘Christ above all’, p.201)

Faith responds to God in certain ways that may well cause an unbelieving world to laugh or to loathe. People of faith are operating by a totally different principle to the rest of the world, and so they stand out from the crowd. They are like a light exposing things hidden in darkness. This does not necessarily make them popular. The New English Bible says: through his faith he put the whole world in the wrong.’

‘In every generation Christian obedience has powerful evangelistic value. Men and women are influenced not only by what we say to them, but by the way we respond to what God says to us.’ (Raymond 6 Brown: ‘Christ above all’, p.202).

Genesis 6:22 tells us that Noah did everything as God had commanded him.

But it was not his obedience that put him in the right with God. It was faith; and that faith was exhibited in radical and costly obedience.