Abraham

ABRAHAM: OUR FATHER OF HOPE

Dearest Family,

Normally my pastoral letters are either a summary of what I taught about on Sunday or a focus on a particular point that was raised. This week, I am going to do something different and give you the gist of what I did not have time to complete. So here goes. If you remember, I was talking about Abraham, our father of hope, out of Hebrews 6. In Romans 4 he is described as our father in the faith, and how he is presented there gives us an anatomy of biblical hope.

Our father in the faith and in the hope.

1. Hope is about a Person: Everything is “in the sight of God, in whom he believed” (4:17). Our hope is all about who God is.
a. before Him: hope is utterly related to the dependability of God. It is not about my insight but about being in His sight. It is not about my perspective on the future but on the assurance of God’s presence there as well as here.
b. In whom: this is not about the grade of our hope or faith, but about the goal of our hope, to believe in Him, and to forever be with Him. Hope limits itself only to what God Himself promises.

2. Hope is about a Promise: “I have made you … Abraham in hope believed.” (4:17-18) Our faith is first in the One who promised, and then we exercise our hope in what was promised, but the ‘what’ never displaces the ‘who’. When there is nothing to go on, there is something to stand on. In the words of the hymn: Standing on the promises that cannot fail / When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail / By the living word of God I shall prevail / Standing on the promises of God. “I have made you…” (promise) is followed by “in whom he believed, the God who gives life to the dead” (hope) and concludes with “Abraham … became” (fulfillment).

3. Hope is about a Persuasion: “Being fully persuaded” (4:21). Where there was no conceivable hope (literally!) Abraham did not allow the facts of what he saw by sight (“that his body was as good as dead”) to overcome the holy facts of faith. The text says that he “faced the fact” but did not weaken or waver. It was a matter of fact, not a matter of fate. Hope did not deny the reality or the state of his virility or Sarah’s fertility. The New Testament nowhere plays down suffering and trial in order to elevate hope. On the contrary, as we have seen, they so often seem to be found in the same context. We are called to an unthreatened examination of the facts and to the unintimidated exercise of faith in the future facts that God has promised for us. As the saying goes, “Weak faith on thick ice is better than strong faith on thin ice.”

4. Hope is about a Provision: This deserves a full treatment, but there are endless products of hope in God’s future promise that are reaped in our present life. Strength and effectiveness of present discipleship is utterly contingent on our biblical hope. Abraham reaped present blessings as a result of his future hope. The birth of Isaac was not the full fulfillment of the promise. You could argue that until Jacob was born it was all up in the air. How interesting then that Isaac and Rebekah had trouble conceiving and also had to learn first-hand what it was to hope in nothing but the promises of God about their future. We cannot spare ourselves this calling to hope. We were saved in hope, have entered a living hope and so will never be apart from it. A study of the provisions of hope in the present will reap great benefits for you. For example:

a. Listen to Peter: He is committed to serve “as long as I live in the tent of this body because I know I will soon put it aside” (2 Peter1:13). It is because of the hope of what is to come that he is aware of the temporary nature of this life and therefore the need to escape the corruption of the world caused by evil desires and live a cleansed life. Hope provides both a motivation to change our life but also an empowerment to do so. Peter is also motivated to serve the Lord with “every effort.”

b. Listen to Paul In Titus 2:1-13, Paul lists many manifestations of godliness in those who seek to adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. The common mark of these people is that they are “looking for the blessed hope”. Biblical hope will totally affect how we steward our lives – “our talents, our time and our treasures.” You could argue that the differing qualities and strengths of believers’ discipleship are calibrated by their convictions about biblical hope.

c. Listen to Jesus: “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matthew 6:19-20). The hope of heaven as a spiritual habit of mind, a “supernatural orientation” as Harry Blamires described it, settles the issues about what we value, and how we make decisions about what we invest in. It will also help us decide what we divest as of no usefulness in the work of the kingdom of God.

The biblical presentation of the challenges and choices of Abraham when it came to trusting the promises of God, believing in hope, hoping against hope and being persuaded that God had power to do what was promised, remains the curriculum for our own walk of hope. As his spiritual progeny, we should expect the same fruit in our lives as he experienced in his: strengthening in our faith and an explosion of continual glory to God. Hope fuels our work for God and our worship of God. Not only was his obedience at Mount Moriah a prophetic preview, a pre-run, of the sacrifice that would secure the hope of our salvation in and through Jesus’ death, but his refusal to lose his mind in response to the incursion of potential hopelessness, meant that he “reasoned that God could raise the dead.” Thus Abraham’s hope not only foresaw the cross, but also the resurrection, the conviction that was the ground of his hope, and the ground of ours. With Abraham, we will share the experience of what the resurrection of Jesus secured – our secure hope that we too shall be raised. Here’s hoping!

Hope fully,
Stuart

ABRAHAM

A PASTORAL LETTER

Dearest family,

I began my message on Sunday by saying that I would only be able to cover half of what I wanted to, but then I ended up only covering half of that half! Apologies, but I also think that what was communicated was sufficient, and what the Lord wanted for the day’s portion. I have been so encouraged by the many responses I have received from so many of you about what the Holy Spirit applied to your hearts. When you are teaching and preaching, you just have to trust the Lord with the process and the outcomes, especially when you are more aware of the challenges and weaknesses of the presentation. How relieving that it is always His Word and that He determines that it will not return void. Hallelujah!

As part of our “Finding Father” series I was arguing that if scripture describes Abraham as our “father” in faith, then as true sons and daughters of Abraham, we should learn something about our sonship by observing what scripture presents as his spiritual fathering DNA. This is an exposition that is first made by Jesus himself as we saw in John 8 when he challenges the Pharisees about a true understanding of what it is to be a true descendant of Abraham, and thus lays the foundation for Paul’s treatment of the matter in Romans 4. Similarly, Paul concludes that the key issue is not about the physical family of Abraham but about the spiritual faith of Abraham that then defines the family likenesses. Thus this text shows us the key marks of father Abraham that will be the disposition of those who are his sons and daughters - that’s you and me. The spiritual fatherhood of Abraham is emphasized: “He is the father of us all…He is our father in the sight of God…” And lest someone says that this is only applicable to the Jews he was addressing, sandwiched between those two statements we read: “I have made you a father of many nations” which affirms what has already been said in v11: “so he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised.” So what is it about Abraham as a spiritual father that will be characteristic of his spiritual sons and daughters, his “offspring” as Paul describes us. I only had time to make some brief comments about one of the four characteristics I wanted to point out, and that was about the “persuasion of faith: “…being fully persuaded…” (v21)

Because of the trustworthiness, the guarantee of the heavenly Father’s grace, sons can live free from doubt, free from anxiety, free from uncertainty, free from fear about anything that could possibly separate them from the love of the Father, or the will of the Father. If the Father was fully persuaded, so should and so could the sons be. This is compelling because for Abraham there was literally no conceivable hope. Faith was not gong to be assisted by Viagra, or by fertility treatment. But Abraham did not allow the feelings of hopelessness (the subjective) to overcome the facts of faith (the objective). The text says that he did not do two things: he did not weaken in his faith (v19) and he did not waver (stagger) through unbelief. Biblical faith is utterly realistic and true to circumstance. The text gives us a father’s lesson to a son in what to do when there’s nothing that can be done. Note these two responses:
He examined the facts: Truth is not a threat. Tampering with it is, because that means that if we adjust the reality of the circumstances and the need, we are actually less likely to trust God and seek God because we have rationalized it, taken the measure of it, managed it, marginalized it, minimized it, or just ignored it, or denied it. Why do we want to make things appear not as bad as they really are? These are not my words but scripture’s: v19, “He faced the fact that his body was as good as dead” which of course is not good at all. And then there’s more reality to cope with. Sarah isn’t a spring chicken bursting with eggs either. Anything else to add Abraham? “Sarah’s womb was also dead.” Womb, tomb, doom, gloom. Game, set and match. I guess it’s all over. God will have to rethink redemptive history! The whole eternal plan for the universe, forget just my life, is scuppered. To face the facts is the very stuff of faith, not the denial of it. Facing and stating the facts is not a negative confession. It is bringing the reality of a son’s life to the love of the Father.
He exercised faith: “Abraham in hope believed…” The reason we need the shield of faith is precisely because of all the fiery darts of doubts. But that which would seek to quench faith becomes the very fuel that serves to provoke our continuing quest to know the Father’s will in all circumstances. The worst that can happen is that we’ll end up spending a lot of time asking the Father about these things in the Son’s name, and as we’ve seen from my last series on asking, this presses us into intimacy with the Father. In Jesus’ words. It invites us to abide in Him more. Whatever happens is good for our experience of sonship, whether it’s what we want or what we would not choose.

The point is that Abraham was not threatened. It was Calvin who cut to the chase and said: “Everything by which we are surrounded conflicts with the promise of faith.” Our inadequacies may well be a threat to ourselves, may well be an embarrassment before others, but they are not a threat or a disqualifier to Father God. Did we not bring them with us into his presence when we first came and did he not accept us just as we were. In the words of the old hymn, “I came to Jesus as I was / Weary and worn and sad.” Our weaknesses, the places where faith is tested, become what someone has wonderfully described as “the arenas of his power.” The text says that our father did not weaken, but he understood that the circumstance was in fact not a death threat edged in black, delivered by a dark gloved claw, but an invitation to be strengthened. Abraham was not threatened.

On the contrary, he thrived. The text says in v20 that he “was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God.” We want to tell Abraham not to be so hasty on the glory bit! No need to be too trusting, too hopeful! But of course, the glory was not grounded in the satisfaction of his circumstances; his worship was not a response to prayers answered but to the one he knew had heard his prayer. That was enough. His worship did not need a changed circumstance in order for it to be fueled, but only the changeless character of God. Likewise, every son’s weakness is an invitation to Father’s strength; all barrenness is an invitation to His fertility; all desert is an invitation to his forestation program; all chaos is an invitation to his order; all inability is an invitation to his power. So the result was two-fold: Abraham was edified – he got strong by simply refusing to weaken; and God was exalted – there was no room for the enemies of faith, because the test strengthened trust. I love the way that Martin Luther put it with such typical earthiness: “Faith grips reason by the throat and strangles the beast. Venture no more to criticize the word of God. Sit thee down. Listen to His words and believe them.” Or how about the hymnal words of Charles Wesley:
Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees,
And looks to that alone; Laughs at impossibilities
And cries ‘It shall be done!’

So the first thing we note about our spiritual father that will characterize our sonship is the persuasion of faith. But what was Abraham’s faith persuaded about, that true sons and daughters of the Father should equally be persuaded about? That’s for the next message in the series!

Pastorally yours

Stuart

http://www.christourshepherd.org/pastlet.htm (and follow links to download MP3 audio of sermon)