Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2292
“By faith he (Abraham) sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for a city which has foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God.” Hebrews 11:9,10.
ABRAHAM’S life, taken literally, is full of instruction, but we shall be wise to take the spirit of it and endeavor to make it our own. We cannot live just as Abraham did, but we can carry out the great principles which lay at the root of Abraham’s life and, if the Holy Spirit will work in us a like degree of faith to that of the holy Patriarch, we may glorify God by our lives, even as he did.
The first point in which we must follow him is that our life must be a life of faith. We cannot be children of believing Abraham unless we live by believing. If you follow your senses, you go by what you see. Now, by what this poor flesh would teach you to desire, you will know nothing of the life of Abraham. He was a man who saw what eyes can never see. He heard what ears can never hear and he was moved, guided, actuated by motives which men of the world can never feel. He was a great man, a very prince among men—first, chief and father of all believing men—but he owed the preeminence of his character to the greatness of his faith. We must have his faith and we must live by it, as he lived by it— and then God will be able to make something of even such poor, feeble creatures as we are.
Let me remind you of what we read in the sixth verse, “Without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” If we would be like “faithful Abraham,” we must begin by being Believers.
Abraham is, in three things, a pattern to us who believe, and those three things will be the divisions of our subject tonight. He is a pattern to us, first, in the mode of his living—“He sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tents.” Secondly, Abraham is a pattern to Believers in the company he kept—“With Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.” And, thirdly, Abraham is a pattern to Believers in the home he looked for—“For he looked for a city which has foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God.”
I. First, dear Friends, it should be our anxious desire to imitate Abraham spiritually IN THE MODE OF HIS LIVING. How did he live?
Well, first, he lived as a man cut off from old associations. He had dwelt in Ur of the Chaldees, on “the other side of the flood,” as the Scripture says, and he was called to leave his family, his estate, his country—and go to a land which he had never seen, and which God promised, ultimately, to give to his family to be an inheritance forever. Abraham was not disobedient. He left his country and he journeyed to the land pointed out to him. Now, dear Friends, we are not, as a rule, to leave our friends and kindred. We would be very ungenerous and ungrateful if we did. There may, however, be occasions when even that may have to be done, but we are really to leave our old associations, our unspiritual, sinful, worldly associations and to come right out. You who are born of Christian parents and live in godly families, do not know much about this coming out, for you are singularly shielded. But there are some here who, if they become Christians, will get “the cold shoulder” from everybody in the house. A man’s foes will, in their case, be they of his own household. They will have to quit their present business. They will have to cut the connection between them and many ungodly men and women. They will have to come right out from the old kith and kin of their ungodliness and each one of them will have to say—
“I am on the Lord’s side—
My old companions, fare you well, I cannot go with you to Hell.”
Now, Abraham did this and he never went back again, as some do who run away from their old master for a little while, and then go back to his cruel service to their own destruction.
I suppose Abraham was called out from the place where he dwelt, to live a separated life, because his kinsfolk and acquaintances were idolaters. The Lord said to Israel, through Joshua, “Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods.” Abraham must, therefore, be taken away from that connection, that he might serve the living and true God. “No,” you say, “but when he went to Palestine, he was among idolaters.” Yes, but it is one thing to walk up and down among idolaters, and quite another thing to be in the same family with them! Abraham was safe enough from idolatry when he moved about among the Canaanites and saw their obscene worship. But he was not safe from it in a decent, respectable household like that of his father, where the teraphim were slyly adored, and the worship of false gods was carried on without the disgusting abominations that were common in Canaan.