Our scripture this evening comes once again from the 11th chapter of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 11. And I will begin reading at verse 21 and read through verse 22, Hebrews chapter 11, beginning at verse 8 and reading through verse 22. 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 a land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundation, whose designer and builder is God. By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore, from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants, as many as the stars of heaven, and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. 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. 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. He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. By faith, Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau. By faith, Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff. By faith, Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his body. Let's pray together. Lord God in heaven, we pray that as we look into your word this night, that you will inform us and instruct us and encourage us in following you faithfully. We pray, our Father in heaven, that you will cause our faith to grow and our love for you to increase. And we pray, Father, that you will help us to be better servants of our Savior, the Lord Jesus, for it's in his name we pray, amen. Many of us know about Abraham, and we know that the scriptures talk about him as a father of the faithful. And the writer of Hebrews carries on that idea of Abraham being the father of the faithful. And in the passage that I just finished reading, the writer sets out some aspects of Abraham's life, and to show us how Abraham, as he lived, demonstrated faith. And in many ways, Abraham provides us with a very useful and encouraging illustration of what the writer has defined earlier as faith. You go back to verse one of this chapter, or to look at verse six of this chapter, and you will see that Abraham is clearly one who shows that he had assurance of things to hope for, that he had a conviction of things not seen. that he was one who wanted to please God and he believed that God existed and that God was one who rewarded those who sought him. So when we look at Abraham, and as we look at him tonight, let's try to keep that framework of the way in which the author of Hebrews uses these worthies, if you will, to help us to understand a little bit better what faith is, and in particular, what he has told us faith is. So let's first look at this. And the writer starts off by a very fundamental characteristic of the faith of Abraham, and we see that by faith Abraham obeyed. He puts that before us so very clearly. And as he begins to describe this obedient servant as a model of faith, We can't help but to be impressed as we look at the text beginning there and looking at it all the way down through that this notion of Abraham's faith manifesting itself in obedience is repeated. It's a theme that comes out again and again as we go through this text. And I think one of the points that we need to grasp is that faith is not kind of some sort of ethereal, out there kind of notion, but it comes to bear on the things that we do every day. And that's why it becomes so important for us to understand this in the terms of obedience. because obedience is something that regularly ought to characterize us in the way in which we live. And in the case of Abraham, he obeys when he's called. That's what we're told there in verse 8. And he doesn't hesitate. He doesn't show any reluctance at all. That's not true in the text that I read to you tonight, but we go back and look At the record of Abraham in Genesis, we see much the same thing. This is quite apparent, for example, in chapter 12 of Genesis. Let me read to you verses one and four of chapter 12. Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. So Abraham went as the Lord had told him. No hesitation, you know, no questioning whether this is a good idea or a bad idea. Abraham just goes. God says go, Abraham went. I mean, that's what we see with this. And so he does what God tells him. If we look in chapter 22 of Genesis, we see something very similar. Let me read to you the second and third verses of chapter 22 of Genesis. And take your son, your only son, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.' So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and he arose and he went to the place of which God had told him." And again, we just see Abraham. I mean, this... you know, heart-rending commandment that God gives to him. Take your son, your only son, Isaac. And he gets up the next morning, takes Isaac, takes some of his servants, even takes the wood with him to go and to make the sacrifice. And so Abraham just does what God tells him. There's no murmuring, no questioning, nothing else. That's the character we see both presented to us here in chapter 11 of Hebrews, but also the character of Abraham as we see it in the Genesis account as well. And the text also tells us that Abraham went out. That's what he did. That's not only what we see here in chapter 11 of Hebrews, but we also see that again also in the Exodus account. Abraham's response to God, it wasn't something that's measured by prudence, it wasn't something that's measured by convenience, it wasn't something that was measured by whether it would have been well for him to do it. Abraham just does it. And when we stop to think about what Abraham is doing, I mean, here's Abraham, who has traveled from Ur to Haran, and then he's in Haran, and while he's there, what does God say to him? Go out, and go out to a place that Abraham didn't know where he was going. And he just does that. He just follows God in that way. And this is not a prudential move. I mean, this is an ancient society where family and connections are extraordinarily important. It's not like 21st century America where you can bounce from one Indian country to the other. It's not that sort of thing. So he's leaving his family, he's leaving his support system. God tells him to go, Abraham went. Again, we don't see any hesitance at all, nothing at all. And even when God does guide him, he guides him to Shechem in Canaan. Let me read to you from chapter 12 again of Genesis, seventh verse. Then the Lord appeared to Abraham and said, to your offspring I will give this land. So there he built an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. Abraham just does what God says to him to do. God says, I'm going to give you this land, and we're going to go on to see. There is no evidence, as long as Abraham lives, that this land is his. It just doesn't happen that way. Because the text tells us, this text and also the Genesis text, that Abraham lived as a foreigner in the land of his inheritance. Sometimes it's hard for us to understand that. Just assume that somehow you inherited a huge big estate, a lovely estate that you inherited, and you want to go on to your estate, and somebody stops you there and says, no, I need to see your birth certificate. You can't go on here unless you, you know, there's no sign that you own this place. You just show me some way that you own this place. And if you're not able to show me your birth certificate, at least show me the deed of the property that tells you it's there. Again, he has to prove himself. There's no evidence in Abraham that it's like this. And the text goes on to tell us that Abraham lived in tent. He was a nomad, just he along with Isaac and Jacob lived in tents as they moved. And again, if I could illustrate that. You buy a huge, big estate. It's got this property, it's got this lovely house on it, and in this lovely house that's there, this is the mansion everybody dreams of. Six bedrooms, eight bathrooms, it's got a garage with four bays in it, and the last bay has your lovely boat in it. You know, it's everything. But somebody else is living there. And where are you? You're in a tent at the back corner. You know, you have no water, you have no electricity, and winter's coming. You see, that's the irony of what Abraham is undergoing. God says, this is your land, this is your inheritance, and he's wandering around in a tent. And the reason that the writer tells us here in Hebrews 11 that Abraham was able to do this was because he had faith. He was trusting in God. He believed that God would do what he said he would do. That's characteristic of Abraham. But perhaps the most convincing evidence of Abraham's faith is shown in his willingness to sacrifice Isaac. We just see the way in which, by faith, Abraham deals with the dilemmas that are tied up in this. I mean, we can imagine the difficulty that Abraham faces. You know, you look at the text, both here and in Genesis. Take your son, your only son, and take him and offer him. I mean, just the idea of doing something like that to your flesh and blood, I have trouble making that work in my head. That's just not the thing people do. Especially people we call civilized, and Abraham is a civilized man. Yet Abraham is ready to obey in this. And this son is a special son. We'll come back and talk about his birth. But this is not just your ordinary son, not just your ordinary son in the ancient world, like Jacob had a dozen of them. This is different with Abraham. And the writer of Hebrews actually tells us, he says, he points out that through Isaac shall your offering be named. What that meant was that all the promises that Abraham was trusting God for are tied up in Isaac. That means that, you know, that God told him he was gonna all the things that were gonna come to him, like the land was tied up with Isaac, like his progeny, all of his offspring, that he's going to have as many offspring as the stars in the sky, and as the text tells us, the sand of the seashore. All of this is supposed to come through Isaac, and if he destroys Isaac, it goes away. So you can see the dilemma that Abraham is facing. God says, this is the person of the blessing, go sacrifice him. And Abraham, we get no evidence. The text in chapter 22 of Genesis says he got up the next morning and he did it. I mean, he just got up the next morning and he did it. I've looked at that text numbers of times and it's just mind-boggling to think of the way in which Abraham did this. That his trust, his confidence, his faith, if you will, in God was so sure that Abraham himself said that he could raise him from the dead. and he names the mountain there that the Lord will provide. When Isaac asks him the question, you know, we got the wood, we got all the things, you got the knife, where's the sacrifice? And Abraham basically tells him, don't worry, the Lord is going to provide. That's the confidence that Abraham has, that's the faith that he has as he goes up into the mountain. And so we see that this trust, this characteristic of Abraham, this faith that we've been looking at here, is in many ways pretty overwhelming. I suspect that you may be like I am. We hear the story of faith, and we hear the story of faith in Abraham, and it's easy to pass us by because we know all the details. But when you go back and you examine those details. I mean, the very idea, if I mentioned already, of sacrificing your own son is just mind-boggling. And, you know, to wander around in a land after God has said, that's yours. It belongs to you. It's yours. To live in a tent and not ever have any permanent abode there. I think we have to recognize how amazing this is with Abraham. But I think we also have to recognize, and it does strike me that the text brings this out a bit, that God not only makes these requirements of Abraham, he not only calls upon him to live out his faith in this way, but he also gives to God, I mean, God also gives to Abraham some evidences, some help. He gives him the faith, and then he does things that encourages that faith, that helps Abraham to live out that faith through the things that he gives to him. And we have a sampling of the things that God gives in the case of Abraham. Now first of all, I think it's important for us to see that the special birth of Isaac, I mean we looked at the way in which Isaac was going to be sacrificed, but I think when we go back and we look at the special birth of Isaac, we see something about how difficult and how hard that must have been for Abraham to trust God in the midst of that. And we go back and we look at Abraham and Sarah, the way in which they're put together in this text. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But there can be no doubt that when they heard this promise that was going to come, that Abraham is going to have a progeny like the stars of the sky and the sand of the seashore, they must have been excited. But surely they were also confused. When they left Haran, they weren't a bunch of kids. You have to remember that. And so they start out. There had to be some excitement. There had to be also some confusion. And I think we have evidences of their up and down, of their discouragement in particular. If you remember the story of Abraham, Abraham has this promise and so what does Abraham do? Well he follows the pattern of the culture that he lived in. He had no children so what does he do? He picks out somebody in his own household who will be his heir. Let me just read to you from Genesis chapter 15 the way in which Abraham actually offers a complaint, a lament, if you will, to God. Let me read that. But Abraham said, O Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus. And Abram said, Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, this man shall not be your heir, your very own son shall be your heir. And so here's Abraham excited. But Sarah is still barren. They're not having any kids. And so we see the confusion, the difficulty of Abraham's faith, because what do Abraham and Sarah do? We know the story. They try to fix it up. They try to help God out, if you will, a little bit to get these things done. So what do they do? They try to take Sarah's handmaid, Hagar, and to make sure that she has a child. And you know about Ishmael, all the problems that occurred with that. And so here we are, and we find out again that Yahweh rejects that plan that Abraham and Sarah had hatched. And so God tells Abraham something that Abraham just couldn't believe. How is a 90-year-old woman going to bear a child? I mean, this was the question that Abraham had. And in Genesis 17, God tells Abraham again, And verse 19 says, God said, no, but Sarah, your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac, and I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. It does seem to me that in verse 11 of this chapter, all that's sort of in there, verse 11 of chapter 11 of Hebrews, all that's mixed in with a story there. And this verse 11 is a hard one to understand. It's a difficult one. We're going through this text, and I don't know if it hits you like it hits me. By faith, Abraham. By faith, Sarah. I'm hearing Abraham's story. By faith, Sarah. So it's juxtaposed in a way that sort of strikes us as we hear it coming to there. The second problem is that the translation in the ESV is distinctly erroneous. I don't know why it is, but it is. Because it says that Sarah conceived, and the word there actually means planting seed by the man. Women don't do that. You know, you don't have to be very smart about biology. So it's distinctly a male-oriented thing it talks about. So it's a hard text for us to, for me at least, to get hold of. As I try to think about that, it does strike me that the best explanation is the writer is trying to put the two of them together and talk about them both having faith. I think that's what he's getting at. But that's also hard because we know about Sarah. You know the story of Sarah. The angel of the Lord comes to Abraham at the Oaks of Mamre, and he says, next year about this time, your wife is going to have a baby. And what does Sarah do? She laughs at him. Not a laugh of joy, but a laugh of, come on. That's what happens. She laughs at him. And how does she describe herself and Abraham? In chapter 18 of Genesis, she says, After I am worn out and my Lord is old, this is going to happen? And Yahweh, the Lord rebukes her. He first of all says, she laughed. And what does the Saradu say? No, no, not me. I didn't laugh. And the angel of the Lord says, yes, you did. I mean, there's that rebuke there. And then we see what happens. Within that year, Abraham and Sarah have a child. The promise comes true. And they bear this child, and he's told his name is going to be— God said what the name was going to be, and they named that child Isaac. Note the irony of all of that. Sarah laughed. What does Isaac mean? He laughed. You see? And I don't think it's a laugh of incredulity like the laugh of Sarah. It's a laugh of joy, because that's what Sarah says about it in the Genesis account. So there aren't completely satisfactory kinds of explanations for all of these things, particularly the role of male and female that's quite confusing because of the language that's used here. But I do think the author wants us to see that both of them are involved in this. And I think we can't pass over Sarah too quickly. We're seeing Abraham, where his faith seems to be so strong, and we see Sarah, where her faith seems to be so extraordinarily weak. I mean, she laughed. She doesn't believe, it doesn't seem. Now, I take the position that when the Lord rebuked her and said, yes, you did laugh, and you're going to still have a baby, that that sort of got to Sarah. It turned a light on, if you will, in her heart and her mind. And so they both are exercising that kind of faith. But we need to remember that weak faith is still faith. And for some of us, that's quite encouraging. There are often times when our faith is really just downright weak. We know God wants us to do something. We have an intention to do that. And we try to figure out reasons why we ought not to be obedient, for example, why we ought not to go ahead with something that requires us of faith. and maybe reluctantly, maybe even stumbling about it, and we do it. And that's the way faith sometimes works. And so I think we can't just push Sarah aside or something beneficial, especially when we look at her in contrast. And we dare not allow the difficulties here to cause us to miss the point. I mean, this is a guy that's 100 years old and a woman that's 90 years old, and they have a baby. And, you know, if you're not surprised by that, I don't know what I can do to tell you to surprise you. I mean, you know, that's surprising, folks. It just is. That's the character of what we have here. So we see this, and God just expects his people to have faith, and when they do, God does amazing things. And some of us can get up and testify that even out of our weak faith, God comes and he does amazing things. Now this story about Abraham and Isaac, he receives back his son, and the text tells us that figuratively, by means of a parable, is actually the language that's used there, that he receives him back. We see this in verse 19 of our text. And we don't have time to do justice to the story of Abraham's offering up of Isaac. There's clearly no more dramatic incident in the life of Abraham than this call for him to offer up Isaac. And just let me read to you again, verse two of chapter 22, God speaking to Abraham, take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on the mountains of which I shall tell you." And Abraham's faith is unwavering in that. And the text goes on to say, our chapter 11 text goes on to say that he was ready to plunge the knife into him. You go back and you look at chapter 22. You know, he puts Isaac on the altar and he's ready to plunge the knife in. It's not until that point that the ram is discovered. It's not till then. And this record of Abraham's offering up of Isaac, this confidence, this assurance, this, as we mentioned before, this dilemma that Abraham had to have. I mean, you know, you're trusting in God. Just put yourself there. You're trusting in God. And God tells you all these promises, and all these promises really excite you. You really get hold of these promises. And after all these promises excite you, God says, offer them up as a sacrifice. Put them on the altar and burn them up. I mean, even if you have a very strong faith, my suspicion is that you, like me, would, what's going on here? You know, one minute you would want to shake your fist at God, and the next minute you would break down crying. That's the sort of thing. But in all this, Abraham exercises faith. He just does what God says he's to do, and he has the confidence that God could even raise his son from the dead. That's the strength of Abraham's faith, and that's the picture the writer of Hebrews wants us to get hold of. And not only do we see this marvelous faith in Abraham, but clearly when we look at that story of Abraham, we also see anticipation sort of pointing us toward what God does for us. I mean, the picture is so very clear, it seems to me, as we look in this text. I mean, here is Abraham. Everything that's important and valuable to Abraham, God requires that of him. I want all of it, God says. That's what he says. Every promise that I've made to you, I want you to be willing to sacrifice every one of those promises. He requires all of that to him. And yet, when Abraham's ready to do that, what does God do? He provides everything that Abraham needs. There is the ram, and what does Abraham say about the mountains? I've already mentioned, those of us who are old and learned at the King Games, Jehovah-Jireh. For those of you who are young and learned it in English, it's the Lord will provide. But the point is, the Lord provided for him. And I think we have to see that. That's the way in which God deals with us as well. He demands everything of us. He demands everything of us. He says, I want you, I want your life, I want your substance, I want your time, I want your affections. God says, I want all of that from you. And we look at ourselves, and what do we see? We're morally and spiritually bankrupt. You see, we don't have anything. We don't have anything that we can give to God. God says, I know they want you. I want perfection. I want perfection. I want you to be just like me, righteous, holy. That's the way in which I want you to be. And he demands that of us. He calls from us. And our answer is, I'm bankrupt. I have none of it. And what does God say? He says, I will provide, I will provide. And so he sends Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ comes and he takes our moral bankruptcy and he gives us the wealth, the plethora of righteousness and holiness that belongs to him. And so we can stand before God. And so we who are morally bankrupt, who have been everything demanded of us, are like Abraham. God provides for us. So I think we see this in the story of Abraham offering up an Isaac. But there are other things in this text that we see, not just that dramatic one, but other things that may be a little less dramatic for us, is that When Abraham is living in a tent as an alien in a land that would belong to his offspring, we wonder, how can he do that? How can he trust God where everything says, God is not trustworthy? I mean, God says, this land is your land. And you'll have to remember that when God says, this land is yours, all of it's going to belong to you. When Sarah dies, what does Abraham have to do? He has to go to the native people who live in that land, to the people who are there, and he has to bargain to buy a place to bury his wife. That's what he has to do. This is his land, this is his inheritance, and he has to do this, and yet Abraham has faith. But in the midst of all of that, we see that Abraham and his offspring, they exercise faith. We see that when we look in verse 13, that they 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 this earth. They're strangers and they're pilgrims, but yet they're exercising faith. And that faith they had was in the promises of God, and that encouraged them. That's the way in which faith comes. They looked for something else. He tells us in verse 10 that they looked for something else, that because of Abraham's faith and that of his offspring, he was able to look beyond Canaan. He was able to look beyond that place where he was living as a tent, that place where he knew that his offspring was going to get one day. He understood that. But the writer of Hebrews tells us that he was looking forward to a city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. The writer of Hebrews also adds that these people saw themselves as strangers and exiles, and they look for a homeland. And the writer is clear. He says to us, it wasn't a homeland like we might think of a homeland, because if they wanted a homeland, they could just go back to Haran. You know, there's the family back there. They could have just gone back. That's not what they were looking for. Even as they lived as exiles, as they lived as strangers in this land, they had something else in mind, something else in their hearts. And the home that they look for is pointed out to us in verse 16. But as it is, the writer says, 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. They're waiting for them. This is a gift to those who exercise faith. And again, I think we have to pay attention to the story of Abraham in this, and Abraham's progeny. That like Abraham, so much of what we live out in our Christian life is not tangible right to us here. We have to look forward to it. And we have to look forward with longing to that city whose builder and maker is God, whose designer and maker is God. And we have to live with that in the exigencies, in the difficulties of this life. We can't allow the difficulties of this life sort of to mask things to us. We have to remember that we have a home, that we have a better place to go to, just as marvelously nice as your home is, that you've got everything in it just as you want it. That's not your home. You live there as an exile. You live there as a stranger. in that place, and you have a better home, and you need to look forward to that. And so in the midst of the exigencies of life, we have to remember what the Lord Jesus Christ said to us in John chapter 14. What did Jesus say to us? He says, I go to prepare a place for you, and it's a wonderful place that I'm going to prepare for you, and he makes this promise to us. He says, and I'm coming back someday, and I'm going to receive you. You're going to enter into that place with me. And in the midst of the difficulties of life, I don't know how they may come to you and how you might have to face them, but as you face those difficulties of life, never forget that like Abraham, you have to look forward to that place whose builder and maker is God, this place that has many rooms in it, as Jesus says, that place that he's prepared for us and he's going to come and he's going to take us back to it. And the writer, as he tells us about these things, it's almost like there's an incidental thing that he tells us, and it says, and God is not ashamed to be called their God. I mean, that's amazing. Here's Abraham. He's sort of a wandering sheepherder. You know, he had lots of money, and he had lots of other things, but we don't see him as the kind of guy that, you know, you're immediately attracted to. And from the point of view of God, I mean, here's God telling him he's going to do these things, and there's a sort of sense in which Abraham and Sarah says, I trust you, God, but you need a little help. Yeah, I trust you God, but I'll try with Eleazar. I trust you God, but let me use Hagar. You see, and yet God is not ashamed to be called his God, that he associates himself, he attaches himself with that. I resonate with that. I don't know if you do or not. I think about myself, I think about my calling and how I'm supposed to fulfill that kind of calling. And I wonder. And yet, God is not ashamed to be called my God. He is with me. He never leaves me nor forsakes me. He's always there with me in my best of times and He doesn't abandon me in my worst of times. And Abraham understood that. And that's what the writer is telling us here. That if you live by faith, then God is not ashamed to be called your God. So we see this illustration, if you will, genuine faith and Abraham has it. Let's just take a little bit to summarize the way in which Abraham shows some of the things that we see in in verse 1 of Hebrews 11 and also in the verse 6. I mean Abraham's life is clearly characterized by assurance of things hoped for. Here he is, you know. I mean, just imagine Abraham. He gets up in the morning, he walks out of this tent, and he looks all around, as he did, as we can see in Genesis, and he walks all around it sometimes, and this is his. Look to the east, look to the west, that's all yours. And then he looks closer, and there are the Canaanites, and they're in charge, you see. But Abraham hoped He had assurance, he was sure those things that God promised to him were going to come true. That was the characteristic of his hope. Abraham hoped for a son to be born to him and to his beloved Sarah. And he hoped for a long time, but he hung on to that hope. He hung on to that precious promise, and eventually the son was born to them. Isaac and Jacob shared the same hope as Abraham. And Joseph, in this text also, almost as an incidental. I mean, Joseph also shows that. Just as Joseph is ready to die, you remember what he says to the Israelites? Don't forget to take my bones with you. I want to go to that land that belonged to my great-grandfather, and I want to be there with them. So take my bones with you. And the amazing thing even about the Israelites is, what did they do with Joseph's bones? They took them with him because they had the confidence that God was going to get them to the promised land. We see all the problems that were there, but we see this in the people of God in that way. Abraham is also convinced about things he could not see. He had conviction about them. I mean, he couldn't see God. He couldn't see him. There was no visions coming to them, by and large. Yes, the angels came, the Lord came to visit him at Mamre with the special coveted sacrifice and all that we find in Genesis 15. But by and large, he just obeys this God who is invisible. When he has convictions, he's convinced that this God can do the things that he promised. And Abraham, as the writer says, clearly believed that God existed. How else could he have gone through all this? I mean, how else? If you don't believe that God existed, could you take your son and start walking up Moriah, the mountain? How else could you do that? He believed that. But Abraham not only believed God existed, but he also believed that God was the one who rewards those who seek him. So Abraham sought God, and God provided for him. He sought God as he went up on the mountain, and God provided for him. He was a seeker after God, and we see the results of his faith. So we see faith here. So God calls Abraham, and Abraham obeys the commands of God. God made these promises to Abraham, and Abraham was assured that those things that he hoped for, for those promises, that they would come true. And I think it's important for us to reflect back on the example of Abraham. I think it's a good way to test our faith. It's a good way to see. We have these concrete illustrations of what faith is, and it does seem to me it's helpful. I mean, are we like Abraham? Are we assured of the things that are hoped for? I mean, I just ask you the question blank or outright. You get in your car and you drive out there and some crazy coming down Mount Hope Road and he slams into the side of you and you die, you die. I mean, are you expecting that when you wake up, you'll see Jesus? You see, that's the assurance that you have of assured hope. That's what the text is, that's what by faith is. Are you convinced that the invisible God will take you into his heavenly city, that one that I've talked about that Jesus has prepared for us? Are you by faith awaiting your reward to join the saints in glory in the heavenly country? Yeah, that's a big one for me this week. A year ago my wife died. I long for that place. I long for it. Depth of my heart. That's a test of my faith. We have to ask ourselves if we can answer yes to all these questions. I think Abraham pushes us to one more. An Abraham that pushes us to us. Do you have that faith? Do you have the faith of Abraham? When somebody writes the story about you, will they say, he obeyed? By faith, he obeyed. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for the faith that you give to us, a faith by which we can live. And we cry out to you, strengthen our faith so that we can be characterized by that which characterized Abraham, that we might obey you, O God, because we know that's good, because you are good. And so work in us, we pray, for Jesus' sake. Amen. Let's turn and sing from Trinity Hymnal number 449.