Note: I have developed a set of slides on PowerPoint 10. The cues for advancing slides and activating animations are included in the notes below. If anyone is interested in having the .pptx file I will send it to you by Email. Send your request to me at sam@srmccormick.net with the subject Lessons from Abraham’s Life Slides and I will send them directly.
LESSONS FROM ABRAHAM’S LIFE
Start with black slide
*Advance to Matt 1:1 slide
“The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” (Matt 1:1)
A more detailed genealogy follows, noting in v17 that there were 14 generations between Abraham and David, 14 from David to the captivity, and 14 from the captivity to the Messiah.
Why did Matthew set these two ancestors of Jesus apart from all the others?
Abraham was the one to whom the promise of the Messiah and the gospel was first delivered. He was called “the friend of God” (Isa 41:8, James 2:23),
And with good reason, he is called “the father of the faithful.”
David was the one on whose throne Mary was promised her son would reign forever. Luke 1:32-33
He was called a man after God’s own heart.
… I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my will. (Acts 13:22)
It is Abraham we will look at today, and examine his life for lessons that are relevant now.
(Tell the story quickly.)
Abram was a man who lived in Chaldea with his wife Sarai.
The scripture tells us that Sarai had no child. She was barren.
Abram’s name was an irony if not a mockery, as “Abram” means “high father,” suggesting multiple generations of posterity.
*Advance to map
Acts 7:2-3 At God’s call Abram left home forever (with Sarai, Terah, and Lot).
*Click 1st animation
Gen 11:31 - They came to Haran and stopped for some time. The scripture says “they settled there.”
We don’t know why they stopped.
This extended interruption of the journey is sometimes thought to have shown a willful loss of concern for obeying God’s command (stopping short of Canaan, not completing the course, etc.).
Many scholars believe it was ill health and the death of Terah that accounts for the halt.
But we don’t know if either is true.
• God appears to have been in no hurry to have his promises realized.
• Should Abram have been in emergency mode?
• God was to show him the land where he was to go, according to the original command.
• It is not apparent that Abram knew yet whether to go beyond Haran or if so, where to go.
(12:2-3 – Abram appears to have been called a second time while in Haran)
*Click 2nd animation
• 12:5 – They came to Canaan
• 12:7 God promised Abram the entire land, countless offspring
• He went through Canaan building altars (Shechem – Gen 12:6-7; Bethel/Ai – v8; later back to Mamre v18)
• 12:10 - Famine drove them to Egypt
• 12:11- 20 - Lied about Sarai in Egypt. Her beauty obviously was phenomenal.
• Taken into Pharaoh’s palace.
• Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household.
• Pharaoh said “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? Take her and go!”
• 13:18 Abram moved to Hebron, built another altar
• 14:1-12 - War of the kings, Lot captured
• 14:18-20 – Returning from the victory, Abram gave tithes to Melchizedek
• 15:1-5 - God appears to Abram, promises a son and countless offspring
• 15:6 - Abram believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness
• Years passed
• Ch 16 Sarai arranged for Abram (now about age 85) to father a son by her Egyptian maid Hagar.
• 16:15 – Ishmael was born
• Years passed
• 17:1 Abram is now age 99.
• God re-iterates the promise of a son, land, father of many descendents
• 17:5 – Abram was renamed Abraham
• Means “the father of a multitude”
• Circumcision was required of all Abraham’s generations as a sign of the covenant God had made 13 years earlier, and declared the covenant to be everlasting
• 17:14 - By circumcision of males, all became participants in the covenant, and any who were uncircumcised were cut off
• 17:16 - Sarai renamed Sarah, promises made concerning her specifically
• 17:20f - Blessings were also promised to Ishmael
• 20:1-15 Lied about Sarah again at Gerar.
• God spoke to king Abimelech, “You are as good as dead because of this woman.”
• So Abimelech returned Sarah to Abraham.
• 21:1-3 – (read this). Long-awaited birth of Isaac
• 22:1-18 (read this) Sacrifice of Isaac
• Ch 23 records the death of Sarah at the age of 127.
• Still a sojourner in the land, Abraham purchased land from one of the Hittites, and buried his wife in the cave of Machpelah.
• Ch 25 records the death of Abraham at age 125.
• Isaac and Ishmael buried him with his wife Sarah.
Lessons from Abram/Abraham’s faith:
Faith was the most distinguishing feature of Abram’s life.
• Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6).
• 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, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. (Heb 11:8-9)
• By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, "Through Isaac shall your offspring be named." (Hebrews 11:17-18)
That great chapter about faith brings us, in vs1-7, from Abel to Abraham, and the rest of the chapter tells us about Abraham’s faith and that of generations yet unborn in his family, and people with whom his family became connected as God’s promises unfolded.
1. FAITH calls for far-reaching changes in your life.
Abram was called to an action that would not merely make changes on the margins, but destroy his life as he knew it.
God’s command to Abram was daunting, to say the least.
All involvements and plans involving his homeland were abandoned.
Imagine being commanded to leave your home, the land of your birth and all your associations and experiences, not knowing where you were to go, but that it is:
• somewhere you have never been,
• with no prospect for returning,
• and not fully comprehending the full plan of God,
• little realizing that your actions are pivotal to the redemption of all mankind.
• There were precious things to give up and leave behind.
• There must have been terrible temptation to rationalize not obeying the command.
• The journey’s end was unknown to Abram.
• Blessings resided only in obeying. That was all Abram knew, or needed to know.
Abram’s attitude was: “I am here. Where you lead, I will go.”
When we submit our lives in total surrender to God’s leading, we cannot know where that choice will takes us – through dark pathways with suffering and sorrow and perils of the way, with heavy burdens to bear, or a brighter, happier course of life. We only know that if we follow his plan, our lives will follow the course he desires for us.
We might ask: What was Abram’s amazing faith based on?
We can only guess...
• Stories handed down from the flood survivors?
• Or some unrecorded earlier direct communications?
• The power residing in whatever way God chose to speak to Abraham?
We don’t know, but we do that his faith was stronger than his own desires.
There was a light of the knowledge of God shining in Chaldea.
And the God whose light was shining in Chaldea was a kind and loving God Abram could trust.
2. Promised blessings are not always evident immediately upon obedience.
When Abram finally got to Canaan, it likely didn’t look like a place worth leaving home for.
Yet Abram built altars, continuing through the land to Egypt.
When God seems unfaithful, the need for faith is strongest:
• There was a famine in Canaan.
• He was directed to sacrifice Isaac
• Never owned the land himself
Abram and Sarai were itinerants in the land – sojourners in the promised land, living in a land possessed by other who did not know or honor God.
Their faith continued unabated until they died:
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. (Hebrews 11:13-16)
3. God’s promises are fulfilled on his own schedule, not ours.
Sometimes they are a long time coming, for no reason we can figure out.
God has no need to prove himself by being punctual.
Isaac, the son of the promises, was born when Abram was 100, Sarah 90.
To Sarai and Abram, God seemed to be running out of time.
But God doesn’t run out of time.
He even brought Jesus into the world and to the cross at the proper time.
...while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:6)
Why not much sooner – right after the sin in the garden?
It wasn’t the proper time.
God doesn’t explain, to Abram, or to us, about his timing.
4. God is faithful, Always.
He has never failed in a single word of a single promise.
The promise to Abraham was a continuation of the words spoken to the serpent in the garden, not forgotten:
God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? (Numbers 23:19)
Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, (Deuteronomy 7:9)
God did not bless Abram’s actions when he took things into his own hands.
Nor will he bless us in the pursuit of our own plans.
So often we say, “Here’s my plan, Lord, I need your signature on it.”
We call on God to bless our plans instead of helping us find his will.
5. God’s power to deliver his promises is not hindered by our weakness.
God did not withdraw his promise because of Abram’s doubts and failings:
Clearly, Abram entertained doubts, as did Sarai.
But we must not malign them for their doubts unless we can claim to have never doubted.
• Lied twice about Sarai, trusting the lie rather than God.
• Fathered a child, trying to make God’s promise real.
• 18:13 Sarah doubted, as shown by her laughing at God’s promise and making her own arrangement for Abraham’s posterity, did not nullify the promise concerning her
*Advance to blank
Now I want to talk about Abraham’s sacrifice of his son.
Abraham was called on to undergo the severest imaginable test of his faith—requiring him to trust God even when it seemed that following God’s command was directly contrary to his promises, and would, in effect, destroy them, along with Abraham’s most cherished hopes.
It was the human equivalent of God giving his son to die.
And (it seems to me), that was the point of the test.
All of God’s promises were part and parcel with God bringing in the gospel, the power of God unto salvation to those who believe.
Paul tells us:
The gospel was preached to Abram in Canaan (Gal 3:8).
He had knowledge, at least dimly, of the Messiah, who would come through his family.
The altar Abraham built to sacrifice his son was the culmination of a lifetime of building altars.
The altars were not a part of a required pattern of law to be obeyed precisely and mechanically.
They were freewill sacrifices, connoting the surrender of his own will to the better and higher will of God.
The mountaintop of victory and union with Christ cannot be reached by
• any mental operation contrived for reckoning of ourselves to be dead to sin,
• or by seeking to devise some way or discipline by which the human will can be coordinated with that of the heavenly father.
• The only way is by learning to accept, day by day, the actual conditions and tests permitted by God,
• by a continually repeated laying down of our own will
and acceptance of his as it is presented to us in the form of the people with whom we live and work,
• and in all the things which he permits to happen to us.
*Advance to altar slide
Every acceptance of his will over our own becomes an altar of sacrifice, and every such surrender and abandonment of ourselves to his will is a means of furthering us on the way to the faith of Abraham to which he desires to bring every child of his while they are still living on earth.
These are some lessons of the story of Abraham and Sarah.
My hope and prayer is that you fill find them relevant in your life.
*Advance to black
