If you want to follow, you might like to turn to Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11, it's page 1077 in the Bible, page 1077. What we've been doing on a Sunday evening is going through Hebrews chapter 11, looking at the men, and there will be women, of faith. And what I've said is that We're not going to look at them as a study in the context, but mainly, we will look at the context, but mainly look at what the writer to the Hebrews says about them. And he says various things. to the end that we might see who and what men and women of faith are like and what was their faith and how was it demonstrated and proven and so forth. So that's very simply what we've been doing. And so we looked last time at, Noah, all right, verse seven, by Noah, by faith, Noah being warned of God, things not yet seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark, the saving of his house, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness, which is by faith. So we looked at the story of Noah. We move on tonight to Abraham, by faith, Abraham. when he was called to go into a place which he should after receive for inheritance, obeyed, and he went out not knowing where he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange land, dwelling in tabernacles or tents 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. Now there are other references to Abraham in the chapter which we come to by and by. A small technical matter. if I may say such a thing, and Abe mentioned it last week. If you noticed, I deliberately pronounced his name from Genesis 12 and 11 as Abram, because that's how it's spelt, A-B-R-A-M. It's not Abraham. Now, strangely enough, in Hebrews 11, He doesn't say Abram, he says Abraham, because that's how we normally know this man, right? But technically, he was originally called Abram, and that word means father, exalted father. Later, God will change his name to Abraham. The H is important there, right? Abraham, and that means a father of a multitude, a chief of a multitude. So you've got exalted father, Abram, and then a father of a multitude, Abraham. Now for ease of communication and so forth, I would just call him Abram, all right? But I don't want anybody coming to me and saying, well, of course, Colin, you actually do know that he wasn't called Abram. I do know, all right? I do know. All right? Abram there changed to Abram. Interestingly, if you notice and listen carefully, I pronounce his wife's name Sarai. And that's what she was originally. She was Sarai. Later, God changed her name to Sarah. H comes again, you see. So, that's a little thing for you to be interested in if you're interested in such things. Right, so here's this man, according to Hebrews 11, who is a man of faith. Now, in what did this faith occur? Well, we are told, very simply, that God called him, all right, by faith, Abram, when he was called. When he was called, that is when God called him. The first thing we have to deal with is what kind of call was this? And obviously it was an audible call. And here we go carefully because people say, well, I've never heard God call me audibly. I think that's very rare these days. If you're hearing voices, I think you have to be very careful. I'm not saying God never does it, but I'm saying you have to be very, very careful. But back in those days, God audibly spoke to people, and obviously, according to Genesis, God appeared to him. how God appeared to him we don't know but it would appear that God took on human form and there's often a phrase in the Old Testament the angel of the Lord appeared to and sure is some special angel who appears as a man but is obviously from God, we would say, I would say, that that angel with a capital E is a pre-incarnate form of the Lord Jesus Christ because he's identified with the Lord, the Lord spoke, the angel of the Lord. And so we be a little bit careful, right? But we don't want to dilute or diminish the Old Testament account because we quite don't understand these things. Now you mustn't do that. If it's a mystery, it's a mystery, and we leave it there. That's what the word of God says, and we are happy with that. But God does call, all right? We would say these days, God calls by his word. It was his word then, audibly. Nowadays, it's by his word, written, right? It's written, it's literal. It's in the book we call the Bible. God calls through the Bible, through the preaching of the Bible, as we talk about the call of the gospel. When the preacher stands, standing in the pulpit, it could be in the open air, it could be witnessing to a neighbor, to a friend, or whatever, and someone feels concern to listen and concerns to pursue this, and they begin to feel a need to listen and to respond to this message. And that, we would say, is the call of God. Now, theologians distinguish between what's called the general call and the effectual call. The general call goes out to everybody. The general call, all right? I believe that the gospel should be preached to everybody because Jesus preached the gospel to everybody. Paul preached the gospel to everybody, and I'm happy so to do. right preaching the gospel it's a general call a general invitation believe in the lord jesus christ and thou shalt be saved repent and believe the gospel be baptized now these are gospel phrases and so there's a general call that goes out Alas, not everybody will respond to this general call. Some will hear with the ears, but not hear with the heart, if you like, or the mind, or the will. And so we have this expression, the effectual call, whereby God, by his spirit, does a deeper work in the heart, in the mind, in the will. And he works in the heart. he inclines the will to receive and to respond, and he grants grace and faith, so someone comes to the Savior. And so we have this classic phrase in Ephesians chapter two, for by grace you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. So here's a man who says, I've got faith in the Lord Jesus, aren't I wonderful? No, you're not. No, you're not, you're a recipient of God's grace in that he gave you faith, he gave you repentance, he gave you the ability to respond to that call. And it's effective or effectual. So those are the kind of calls we talk about in the Bible. God calls through his gospel. So, here's a man that God calls to come out. Now, where was he? Well, he was originally, he lived here in the Chaldees with his father, Terah, pagan land, right? And he's called, and Terah comes, Terah's not called, he comes to Canaan, and then they stay in Haran for a little while, and then God calls Abram to, let's see what it says, when he was called. to go out into a place which he should after receive inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he went. Now notice the physical movement here. All right, so here he is, he's called to go out, all right, and he went out not knowing where he went. Do you see the emphasis here? It's going, he's moving from here to there. He's going from here to there, and when he's been there, he's come from there. It's a movement. Now as I thought about this and coming out of a pagan land into another land and moving physically, geographically, and all that was involved, I thought about you, dear folk, and I thought about myself. I'm not sure how many of you would understand anything about moving from one place to another place. It's not saying that you're detrimental. It's just a fact. I'm not going to ask you to put your hands up, right? But I know some of you have lived in this area all your lives, all right? I sometimes joke about the dicker, I know I shouldn't, but there are some folk who were brought up in the dicker and are still living in the dicker area. Or if you want to widen it, born and bred in Sussex, married in Sussex, live in Sussex, and by God's grace will die in Sussex. And you've never been out of the county. All right, now increasingly that's becoming rare because when some of you are younger than me, all right, that's what you did. I was brought up in a little Welsh village called Pencoed near Bridgend and the folk that lived there, they were born there and they married there and they worked there or in the mines or the factories round about and that's where they stayed. They never went anywhere else. That was their home, that was their village, that was their town. But if you've ever moved out from one place to another place, you'll see how strange it is. And it is strange. Why I'm saying that some of you have never moved, because sometimes you can't understand the mentality and the trauma of moving. If you've never actually moved from one town to another, one county to another, one country to another, and you find it difficult, because here's a man who moved from a country, right, from the Earlsholtes, and he's moving towards Cailin, and it was a huge move, apart from the geographical, all kinds of things changed. And it is difficult unless you've experienced it. Forgive a few personal things, but I think it's easier if I illustrate it by this. I moved from Wales. to England, wow, now you can't understand it unless you're Welsh or Scottish or Irish, what it is to move, and I suppose it's the same for somebody moving into, from England, into Wales, into whatever, and it was very strange. We went to live in Surrey, Surrey, Surrey, all right, and here's this boy from the valleys, all right, Brought up in a council house, ordinary little lad, and now he's sorry, very sorry, and he's totally different. Now these are silly examples, right, but I want you to get the point. The fact that I can say it 40 years on, 40 years on, I can see it now in my mind, shows an impact it had on me. I went to the grocers in a shop in Surrey, Green Grocers, And I asked for a bunch of gibbons. Gibbons? You've all heard of gibbons? Nobody's heard of gibbons? Well, how ignorant you are. And the woman, the girl said, we don't sell gibbons. I said, what kind of green grass is this? You don't sell gibbons. Strange, isn't it? And I looked around. There they are, look. You do sell them. Spring onions. Gibbons, gibbons, gibbons, gibbons. Totally different, just a small little, I don't know if it's Welsh. The other thing is, yeah, Ben liked this. So I go to B&Q and I need sticks for my beans, right? So what do you call sticks for your beans? You call them bean sticks. So I go into B&Q and I said to the man, do you sell bean sticks? He said, no. It's a funny place, they don't sell bean sticks. So I only wander around, and there I come across these bamboo games. I said, there's bean sticks. They're not bean sticks. They're bamboo games. Well, to me, they're bean sticks. Now, that's a small thing, right? But I want you to see the whole language, the culture, the tradition. It's a huge thing to move. really is. So here's Abraham, he's moving out of that interest completely because God has called him. It's not because he's been on a travel lodge. It's not because he'd looked up a trust pilot. It's not because he's looked, researched it. God has said, I want you out of there and into there. He was called to go out and it says he went out. Now, this is interesting. He went out, which meant he was obedient to God's call. Faith leads to obedience. If you don't obey, you have no faith. The gospel says, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. If you do not believe, you will not be saved. All right? We are saved by faith without works. I quoted Ephesians 2.8 to you. But faith which is not followed by works is not saving faith. Martin Luther was the champion, if you like, back in the day of salvation by faith. He rebelled against the Roman Catholic belief and doctrine that it was by works and by penitence and by the spirit. prayers of the saints and by Mary and a host of things. And if you did this, did this and did that and paid this and paid that and went on all these kind of pilgrimage, then by those good works you would merit salvation. And Luther said, no, no, no. Salvation is by faith alone, by grace alone, by Christ alone, alone. But then he went on to say, Saved by faith alone. But faith alone is not saving faith. There must be evidence of that work of grace in the heart. Jesus said something simple along these lines. By their fruits you shall know them. By your fruits. If somebody tells me that's a fruit tree, I say, oh that's nice, what kind of fruit? Apple, okay? And then it grows pears. He's not telling the truth. Apple trees grow apples. Even a simple council lad like me knew that. Pear trees grow pear trees. Brambles grow blackberries. But they don't grow apples or pears. By their fruit you shall know them. So, God calls him. He has faith to believe that God will do what he says, and out he goes. He obeys. He believes the word of God. Dear ones, we need to believe the word of God and act upon it. In a sense, this is all we've got. And in a sense, we don't need anything else. We have God's word inscripturated from Genesis to Revelation. This is God's word, and this is God's book of promises. He went down a promise, God promised. And if he obeyed and went to the land, he would bless him. And one of the blessings he would give him, of course, would be an inheritance. You will have an inheritance. and it'll be a great inheritance. And there'll be several things. One of the things will be the land. I will give you the land. It'll be the promised land because it's promised to you. This is part of a covenant that God made with Abraham. It's part of the agreement. You go out, you obey, you believe, and I will bless you. And I will bless those who bless you and then you will curse you, I will curse them. You're going to be the father of blessing, the father of faith, the father of faithfulness. All this I promise you. Wow. Some promises. And we are recipients of the promises of God. My dear brother, my dear sister, in Christ, if you're a true believer tonight, God has made promises to you and he will keep them. And dare I say carefully and reverently, he must keep them. He cannot break his promise because he is God. Well, he told there that he goes out to a place which he should after receive an inheritance. He obeyed, and he went out, not knowing where he went. By faith, he sojourned in a land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles, or tents, with Isaac, all right, and Jacob, the heirs with him, of the same promise. Abraham was the father and they were the offspring and they would inherit what the father had and already promised to them. Here's a little question for you. I go carefully, but will you leave a legacy when you go? Will your children, if you have children, grandchildren, what would be their inheritance? Will it be purely financial, physical, the house, furniture, best cutlery, whatever you believe? Will you leave them a spiritual legacy? I guess because of my age and having hundreds and thousands of children and grandchildren, great-grandchildren, I think about these things. I tell you what I think. I think, well, all this material stuff, okay, But I pray that I might leave a spiritual legacy to them. That they may remember spiritual things. Remember that their dad, grandad, great grandad was a Bible man, a Christian man, a man of faith and all that goes with it. Don't you want to be remembered like that? I do. Oh, I do. And one of my prayers for my children, as I'm sure you do, it's not only that they might all be soundly saved, but they might be used of God in the kingdom. We come back to this next Sunday morning, God willing, but not just that the Lord would bring them into the kingdom, but use them in the kingdom to reach others with the gospel. A legacy, a spiritual legacy for those who come on behind. Well, what else is there? Well, let's look at this. Dwelling in tents, all right? We mentioned tents the other day. I mentioned about holiday-gone tents, lovely holidays in tents when the girls were little. Well, they were nomads, they moved from place to place, all right? It was a temporary dwelling. Verse 10 says, for ye look for a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. He's looking for something permanent. Now, we're spiritualizing this, aren't we? He's looking for a permanent dwelling, a permanent place where there'll be no more moving day by day, month by month, something that is permanent. And he's looking for an eternal dwelling place built by God, a heavenly dwelling. Now, again, I quote Abe from last week. John 14, in my father's house are many mansions, or better, many dwellings. God is preparing a dwelling place for you if you're a believer, and it's got your name on it. It's got your name on it. Your name is written on the door, spiritually speaking, all right? If you're in the Lamb's Book of Life, your name is there, and you will have a dwelling, and there'll be hundreds and thousands and millions and millions of folk who've trusted in the Lord Jesus, and they're all there in this great dwelling in God's presence. Eternal dwelling place. I had a smile that is a little bit controversial, but you can take it, when there was a controversy about how do you translate that word mansions in John 14. And Abe mentioned it. He said the word is just dwellings, it's actually rooms. It's used elsewhere of the upper room. We don't read the upper mansion, it's just upper room, same there. But obviously the translators felt that it was worthy of a higher status. Trouble is there are some dear Christians really objected because they felt that they'd been robbed of their mansion. And I thought to myself, why are you going to heaven? Because you've got a mansion or because Jesus will be there? I'd rather be in a shed with Jesus than a mansion of my own, wouldn't you? Come on. Oh, mansion, where's my mansion? What do you want a mansion for? The savior will be there. What else do you want? What else do you need? It's very worldly thinking in my opinion. Now, one of the problems of applying this coming and going, all right, which actually physically took place with Abram, is how do you apply that spiritually? coming and going, changing from this country to that country. It's a bit difficult for the preacher, for me, all right? Now, we have an expression in English, don't we? It's about the journey of life, all right? Some people use that. You begin the journey, travel through, come to the end of the journey. I mean, you can use that expression to illustrate things. I thought, well, how do we illustrate this coming and going in a spiritual way? Well, I think one of the things we can do is to see that the Bible does talk about coming out of and into in a spiritual way. For example, the Lord talks in John 5 about passing from death into life, spiritual death into spiritual life. All right, when Paul writes to the Colossians, he talks about being translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear son. So there's a coming out of and a coming into. And that's the message of the gospel. We're not just brought out, full stop, and left in the middle, in limbo, in the wilderness. We come out of and into. We come out of ourselves, if you like, out of the life we live, the old life. We come into a new life, a life in Christ. Out of ourselves, into Christ. Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians, it's in chapter five. If any man be in Christ, that is spiritually alive in Christ, having faith in Christ, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. Old things have passed away, behold, all things become new. There's a movement from the old to the new. There are new desires, there are new thoughts, there are new activities, it's new. and for those who were a bit rough and ready and outwardly very bad and so forth and wayward, it's dramatic. Wow, this new life, this new life. Once we never went to a building like this, a church, we never read a Bible, never did anything that was spiritual and Christian and then suddenly God took all of us and God rescued us and then everything became new. We want him to go to church. Wow, fancy that? Yes, he's a youngster of 16. What a little rebel he is. And he wants to go to church. He wants to sing praises of God and not silly old rugby songs. He wants to tell people about Jesus, but it's before he does blaspheme. It's a complete change, there's a newness. But those who always went to chapel, like my mate David, he was a good chapel boy, and my best friend, my best man, and I his, we went to the same church, but the backgrounds were so different. Because you're a nice lad, still needed to be converted, still needed to be saved, still needed to call upon the Lord Jesus. Background's different. So there is this kind of changing from the old to the new. And these changes happen in several areas. These are just for examples. One of the greatest changes, our past. Now in a sense, you cannot change your past, you cannot change You put right the things that were wrong. When I say that, you know what I mean? You can't redo them, go back and say, some things you can make a conversation about or whatever, but past is past. And the guilt of those things, you may ask someone's forgiveness, you may try to put things right, but the guilt, how can you deal with the guilt of the past? Well, bring it to Jesus. take the guilt and he can take it and deal with it because that's what he did on Calvary. He died for our sins. He took the guilt of the sin so that when we stand before God in that day, there will be no sin called to account. There'll be no guilt called to account because he has dealt with the sin and dealt with the guilt. Praise God for that. You're like me, the things you've done in the past, you cannot ever forget. The great sins, you cannot forget, they're there in your past, you can't forget them, but you've brought them to Jesus and they're covered with the blood and they're finished with as far as God is concerned. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. The past is dealt with. The present, The present? The present is living day by day by the power of the Holy Spirit, living day by day to seek to please our God, living day by day, endeavouring to be more like the Lord Jesus. It's a present experience. It's a present reality, day by day, we should be knowing something of God's grace and his blessing and his power and all the things that belong to the gospel, the blessings of the gospel should be ours on a daily basis. Now I quoted Graham Harrison, would translate that him, Another famous Welshman was William Williams, Pantycellin, and you'll know of him, I'm sure, and some of the great hymns he wrote. William Williams was a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist back in the 18th century, a friend of Daniel Rowlands and Harold Harris and later George Whitfield and the Wesleys and so on. And he started what they called an experience meeting. we might call it a fellowship meeting. So in the week, Wednesday, Thursday, whatever, in the week, the people of the church would gather together, members, and he would say, what has the Lord done for you this week? Or how has it been with you spiritually? And they would chat. Somebody say, well, you know, the Lord blessed me so much in this particular thing, and he'll describe it, and say, oh, well, praise God for that. And somebody else says, well, you know, the Lord chastened me, I must admit, I was a bit wayward, and I said something I shouldn't have said, and then the Lord dealt with me in this way. And they would share their experience, not to puff themselves up, but to give God the glory and encourage others who may be going through a difficult time. So they had this experience meeting. But you see, it was William Williams' belief that every week you should be able to say something about the goodness of God. I tried this in Stanmore, in my church there. I said, right, why don't you have an experience with it? Of course, this was revolutionary, and he was Welsh. And I said, okay. So this dear brother, I could see him now. He said, well, I'll tell you my experience. And he told us what the day he was converted. I thought, well, that's wonderful. But that was 30 years ago or 40 years ago. What did the Lord do for you yesterday? I don't know. And I felt glad in one sense he had a testimony, but sad in another sense he didn't have anything up to date. No. We don't like you to have it, but what if we did, in Gordon Road? Come and share your experiences, what the Lord has done for you. Oh, I'm not going to that kind of meeting. Why not? Well, I don't know what to say. Hasn't the Lord done anything for you? Well, I don't know. You know, forgive me for saying this, but I'm looking at myself as, at the end of it, we are at a very low ebb, you know, and we can't say day by day, week by week, if you like, month by month, if you want to. God has done this for me. God has done that for me. God has been so good. We need to experience more. I'm not talking about jumping up and down experiences. We need to experience the goodness of God day by day. I told you about the lights, didn't I? The lights, the bane of my life, how they test my patience. And sometimes, albeit rare, sometimes I stop at the red light and say, thank you Lord, I'm stuck here. Hallelujah. Now that's a good thing. It's rare, but it's a good thing. The Lord is dealing with me. Now I might need another thousand red stops for me to do the work, finish it, but day by day, thank you Lord, and I just relax. Haven't you got something like that to say? I'm not talking about lights now, all right? But the goodness of God, day by day, little things, little things. Say, Lord, thank you. Lord, you are so good to me. Have you said that lately? Have you said that? Lord, you're so good to me. You've been shopping, you've been in the car, you've been in the surgery, you've been in the hospital, and something has happened. You say, Lord, you're so good to me. Thank you, thank you. You're so good to me. And then finally, the past, the present, the future. Forever with the Lord. Amen. So let it be. Our future is guaranteed. It's guaranteed by God the Father. It's guaranteed by God the Son. It's guaranteed by God the Holy Spirit. It's guaranteed by the triune Jehovah. It's guaranteed by the covenant of grace that the Father has made with the Son and with the Spirit. And all this is put together for such is you and such is me. Now, I don't think I've ever been on a package holiday, but if I understand it right, everything is included. The airfare, and the digs, and perhaps the food, everything, it's one big package. Package holidays meant to me that my wife would put things in a packet and we'd go off on a holiday. And that was a package holiday. But this is a great gospel. And boy, what a package it is. God Almighty, the Father, the Son, the Spirit. All that goes on in eternity past, all that goes on present, all that'll go on in eternity to come. Wow. What a package. And it's guaranteed by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. By faith, Abraham went out, went in, began to know the promises of God and the inheritance of God and so forth, which we come on to God willing next week. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for Abraham and for his calling out and his going out and his faith to respond and his obedience. And it was reckoned to him righteousness. It wasn't that he was worthy because he was better than anybody else in the area of the colonies, but you laid your hand upon him, and it pleased you to bring him to yourself. And you kept him. He wasn't perfect. He had flaws and failures like the rest of us, but he was your person. And you kept him and blessed him. Oh, Lord. Grant us this night, we're not like Abram, but we have the same God. God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of Abram, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the covenant, the God of the promise, the God of the inheritances. He is our God. He is our Father. Bless your word to us. Please, Father, for Jesus' sake, amen. Amen, amen. Let's sing our final hymn. 507. It's a gospel hymn really, but it's a lovely hymn. 507. Arise, my soul, arise. Shake off thy guilty fears. The bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears. Before the throne my surety stands. My name is written on his hand. 507.