The series of sermons that I'm going to be presenting on the life of Abraham, the life of Abraham. And we are interested in this particular man, not only because he's one of the main characters in the Bible, but because you and I have a point of connection with Abraham. That point of connection is this, Abraham was called to live by faith. And you and I are called as Christian people to live by faith. The Bible says of God's people that they walk by faith and not by sight. Now, this thing of living by faith is not easy. And we need instruction and we need guidance. And Abraham is given to us here in the Word of God so that we may have instruction and guidance on this matter of living by faith. Now, I know some of you will find this hard to believe, but I get discouraged sometimes in this business of living by faith. I get discouraged. And I need comfort. I need strength when I get discouraged. And I look here at the life of Abraham and I find comfort and I find encouragement. Because Abram also, ladies and gentlemen, struggled in His calling to live by faith. And tonight we're going to see some of that struggle. We're not going to see all of it. There are more struggles to come. But we're going to see some of it, and that, I trust, is conveyed to you in the title of the sermon, The Ups and Downs of Faith. And we have three points to the sermon tonight. There's up, and there's down, and there's up again. Now, if that's not a clever sermon outline, I don't know that you'll ever be able to hope for a clever one from this pastor. That's about as clever as I can get. Up and down and up again. Now before we trace the Abraham through the ups and downs of faith tonight, I just want to remind you what this thing of faith is. We're called to live by faith. And I have to say, brothers and sisters in Christ, that I'm dismayed these days because a lot of God's people don't understand what faith is. Now, here's an irony for you. We're called to live by faith and we don't know what faith is. And part of what I was about last time we looked at the life of Abraham was to point out to you what faith is. Most Christian people that I encounter these days think faith is this, you just pick something out, doesn't matter what it is, might be a new car, might be a new house, might be something quite different from those things, but something that you think you should have, and you convince yourself that you're going to have this. And you just keep persuading yourself, convincing yourself, and if you believe strongly enough that you're going to have this thing that you have set your mind and your heart on, then God is obligated to give that particular thing to you. And ladies and gentlemen, that's the definition of faith that I encountered back years ago as a Baptist boy coming up the ranks in Baptist Sunday school and in the Baptist worship services. I got this idea that faith is believing that God will give me whatever I want Him to give me, and all I had to do was just persuade myself, and it would be the case. And ladies and gentlemen, I tell you, God's not obligated to give you whatever you want. God is obligated to do what He has promised. And faith is not positive thinking. That's what most people seem to think it is, positive thinking. Faith is believing the Word of God. And Abram here received a word from God, which found this to be true, and he acted on the basis of that word. I can give you another definition of faith. I can tell you that faith is believing the promises of God and the God of the promises. And ladies and gentlemen, we look back at these opening verses in chapter 12 and we find that's exactly what Abram did. He believed in the promises of God. He received very distinct promises. But he also believed in the God of the promises. Because God shouldered, as you recall, the whole burden. God constantly said there in those opening verses of chapter 12, I will, I will, I will. Aren't you glad that we have got a God like this? who makes promises to his people and who shoulders the whole load in the keeping of these promises. I tell you, God's not sitting in heaven tonight in a state of anxiety. God's not gnawing on his fingernails. God's not in a panic. God is not sitting there saying, oh, what if those people there at Emmanuel Church do not believe me? My whole plan will come crashing down to the ground. Oh, my. That's a scary thought, isn't it? Thank God the fulfillment of the things we are called to believe does not rest upon us, it rests upon God. And God who calls us to faith is a reliable God who will sustain our faith. Well, we're called to live by faith, even as Abram was, and living by faith means that we live on the basis of the Word of Almighty God. Now, we're in a day, ladies and gentlemen, The Word of God is being attacked, and we're being ridiculed for living on the basis of God's Word. But that's what it means to live by faith. You live on the basis of what God has revealed, even when it appears to be utter foolishness to do so. Does this appear to be foolish? Abrams, 75 years old, God says, go out here to a land that I'll show you, and I'm going to make of you a great nation. He's 75 years old. He doesn't have any descendants. And yet, my friends, Abram chose to believe God, even though it appeared to be foolish to do so. Now, the world will tell you tonight, young people, that you're foolish to believe in the Word of God. I tell you, go ahead and believe it anyway, and just like Abram, it will finally prove to be true. It'll finally prove to be true. Now, follow me as I just pick out a few verses to read here from chapters 12 and 13. Let's remind ourselves of verse 1 of chapter 12. Now, the Lord said to Abram, get out of your country, from your family, from your father's house, to a land that I will show you. Now, verse 4. So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him. There's faith. God spoke. Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him. And then let's drop down to verse 10. Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land. And then go down to chapter 13, verse 1. Then Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and locked with him to the south, and look at verse 4, to the place of the altar which he had made there at first. And there Abram called on the name of the Lord. And those verses that I have just referenced document for us Abram struggling with this matter of faith. And I've given you the three points. Abram is up in faith, he's down in faith, and he's up in faith again. And isn't that your experience as a child of God? Don't you find that faith is like riding a roller coaster? Don't you remember times in your life where you were so very close to God and you thought, well, I finally got this Christianity business down pat? I've got this figured out. I have had, I hope I don't disappoint you tonight, but I have had very few overpowering spiritual experiences. I've had some. but I've not had as many as I would like to have had. I had one of those overpowering spiritual experiences. I think I could use another these days. But I had one of those when I was a teenage preacher, and I remember it very well. And I was driving along and God just became so very precious and real to me. It wasn't like D.L. Moody's spiritual experience. He was walking along the streets of Chicago one day, and he had such a powerful spiritual experience that he said he had to ask God to stay his hand. In other words, he thought this, I can't bear it, I can't stand it any longer. Well, my spiritual experience wasn't as powerful as that, but I had a spiritual experience. As I drove along in the car, that was so overpowering to me. And I thought, I'm finally getting this Christianity business down pat. And I felt so strong in the Lord. And if you had told me then that I would have slipped back, I would have said, well, that's impossible. I'm so close to the Lord now. And yet, ladies and gentlemen, I have slipped back many times in my walk with the Lord. Slipped so low that I surprised myself. Am I describing now your experience? Have you had one of those up times whenever it just seemed to you that you were so strong in the Lord and so powerful and you thought nothing will ever be able to take me away from the Lord? I ask you, did something come along and kick the props out from under you? Did something take you away from the Lord? Do you ever wonder why it is so hard for us to maintain a steady level in the Christian life? I'm not talking about just constantly going up. I'm talking about just maintaining a high spiritual level. Do you ever wonder, do Muslims have this problem? Do they ever rededicate themselves? Baptists about worn out the carpet in some churches, rededicating themselves. And please don't misunderstand me. If you need to rededicate yourself, I'm glad for you to do so. But the very fact that we have this emphasis on rededication and tells us that we're finding it very difficult to maintain a steady spiritual level in our Christian walk. Do other people have this problem? Do the Muslims? Do they backslide? Wouldn't appear to be the case, would it, in this day and age? Well, you and I might even be inclined to pronounce on our Christianity. We might say, well, because we have such a hard time maintaining it, we have such a hard time maintaining a high spiritual level, there must not be anything to it. Oh, I say to you, my friends, that this has always been the case with the people of faith. Why do you suppose that is, anyway? Why do you suppose the people of faith have this rollercoaster experience? Why is the graph of the individual Christian life like this, you know? I've always wanted it to be like that. In my better moments, I've wanted it that way. But my spiritual graph, if you could graph me spiritually, it would go like this, and then it would go like that. The lows are usually lower than the highs are high. And that would be my spiritual experience. Up and down, up and down. Have you ever wondered why that's the case? Could it be that the God who is sovereignly supervising our lives leaves us to ourselves from time to time and lets us plunge ever so low so that we will know that we're not sufficient in and of ourselves? And when we come through one of those low times, we'll be more dependent on Him, more trusting, will cling to him more. I don't know. I'm just wandering out loud. I'm wondering why we have such a struggle, and that's the graph of our lives, where people who are devoted to other things don't seem to have these struggles. They seem to just go on without so much as a single moment's hesitation, without so much as a lull. They seem to go on from one height to another. And yet we seem to have difficulty. Here we are getting ready for this good treasure crusade. And in order to have a successful, I despise that word, but in order to have a successful crusade, We have to beg and urge and exhort and coax our people. And we're constantly saying, now lay aside lesser things, lay aside lesser things, lay aside lesser things. And with all of our pleading and with all of our begging and with all of our exhortations, there are some of our members, many of them in fact, who never will. They never will. They will go right ahead without regard. to sacrificing anything for the cause of God. It gets discouraging. And I would get very discouraged if I did not see this same graph here in the Bible. Here's Abram. He's up, he's down. He's up, he's down. And I say to you, and I'm wondering, I'm thinking out loud. that maybe the explanation is that God just leads us to ourselves from time to time. I'm not talking about totally, but He leads us to ourselves. He withdraws from us to such an extent that we crash and then we realize how utterly dependent we are upon Him every single day of our lives. Now, look at this up here in Abram's life. Right back there in verse 4, chapter 12. So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him. God spoke and Abram did. You have to say that Abram's doing well here at this point. My hat is off to Abram at this point. All this man had when he did this in verse 4 was this thing we've talked about, the bare naked Word of Almighty God. He certainly didn't have any external confirmation. We're told here that he departed as the Lord had spoken to him. And verse 5 says, so they came to the land of Canaan. And look at verse 6, and the Canaanites were then in the land. Now, if we had been in Abram's place, we would have been put off considerably by this state of affairs. God says, Abram, go to a land that I'm going to show you and I'm going to give that land to you. And I'm going to give it to your descendants. And now let's just imagine that you and I were in the position that Abram was in. And now here we go. We've made our journey and we come to the land of Canaan. And guess what? There are Canaanites living in that land. Sign, welcome Abram. to the land that God's going to give you. Big neon sign flashing. And down at the bottom, you remember how you used to see at the motels and vacancy? No vacancy. Why, you and I, if we'd been in Abram's position, we might have expected there to be a big welcome sign there. Welcome to the land that God's going to give you. And down at the bottom, vacancy. There's nobody here. Just move in. That's not what Abram found. He gets to the land of Canaan. God says to him, you can stop journeying now, Abram. This is it. You're there. And Abram looks around and he says, you mean this is it? And God says, this is it. And Abram immediately sees a problem. The land's not vacant. It's full of Canaanites. Now, if Abram had been a Baptist, and I don't think he was, and I'll give you proof of it now. I don't know what he was, but I can tell you he wasn't a Baptist, okay? Because if he'd been a Baptist, he would have formed a study committee. And he would have said, now, we're going to study this situation and the committee is going to bring back a report. What? Why could it be, how can it be that there are Canaanites in the land when God has promised to give me the land? And that's the job of the study committees, to figure this out. You have to admire Abram at this point, don't you? Land is full of Canaanites, and Abram goes into the land on the naked, bare Word of Almighty God. And once he gets there into the land, He kind of stakes it out. Look there at verse 7. We're told, "...then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your descendants I will give this land." Canaanites there. Look again. Oh, how important it is to read the Word of God carefully. Canaanites are all over the place, and Abram's there, and God says, Abram, I will give your descendants. God takes it upon himself. Abram says, I don't see how. It doesn't matter when God says, I will, whether you see how or not, does it? All that is sufficient is the I will of God. That's all you need. That's sufficient. And look at what Abram does there in verse seven. And there he built an altar to the Lord who appeared to him. Oh, you can tell, my friends, now that Abram's up in his faith because he's worshiping. He built an altar to the Lord, and he stakes out the land. He moved there, verse 8 says, from the mountain to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and I on the east, and there he built an altar to the Lord, and he called on the name of the Lord, and so he journeyed on, going still toward the south. He's staking out the land, and he's worshiping every place that he stops. Abraham's full of faith here. Faith is abounding in his heart. If you want to know if faith is abounding in your heart tonight, one indicator of the level of your faith is your attitude toward worship and the degree to which you enjoy worship. If you have a positive attitude toward worship, if you look upon worship as the highest act of which you are capable, that indicates that faith is thriving in your heart. And if you are enjoying the worship of God when you are in the house of God, that indicates that faith is thriving and flourishing in your heart. heart. And Abram here has got thriving, flourishing faith, and Abram's so strong in his faith right now that if you and I were asked to give an assessment, we would say, well, nothing, nothing can ever throw Abram off course. Look, he's just too strong in the faith. Now look at verse 10. Here's the second point of the sermon down. We've seen up, now here's down. Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land. I don't know, my friends, that there is any verse in the Bible more important to a large part of Christendom today than that particular verse. Because there's a large part of Christendom today that would say to you that if you're in the will of God, you're not going to have any problems. Now, Abram, is he in the will of God? He's in the land. God said, go to the land that I'm going to show you. Abraham departs. He goes to the land. He's there in the land. Is he in the will of God? Verse 10, now there was a famine in the land. There was a famine in the land. We constantly want to believe that living for God should bring with it external confirmation. I live for God and I get external confirmation. I've got money in my pocket. I live for God, I get external confirmation. I've got good health. I live for God and I get external confirmation. I'm popular, well-liked by all the people who are around me. And yet, ladies and gentlemen, the Bible tells us just exactly the opposite. You live for God and you may not have all these blessings that you expect to have. You may have problems instead. You may have problems instead. This is so clear in the Word of God. What about Moses? Was he a man of faith? What do you think? Eh, we're divided on Moses. Okay, throw him out. No, you know Moses was a man of faith. Did Moses have problems? You better believe it. He had those murmuring, grumbling Israelites. They were Baptists, by the way. Abram wasn't, but those Israelites were. Here's Moses, man of God. There's no greater man of God to be found in the Old Testament than Moses. Some just as great, but none greater. He had problems. What about David? You think David was a man of God? The Bible says he's a man after God's own heart. Is that good enough to qualify him as a man of God? I think so. Did David have problems? You think about King Saul chasing him around the wilderness. Think about his son Absalom, who absolutely tore David's heart to pieces. And you have your answer. It's possible to be a man of God, a woman of God, and have difficulty. What about Paul? You think he was a man of God? Over there in 2 Corinthians chapter 11, he lists all of his sufferings. Here he is living for the Lord and he says, and this happened to me and that happened to me. Somebody, I think, counted 23 different experiences of suffering that Paul listed there in 2 Corinthians 11. What about Jesus? You think he was a man of God? He was the perfect man of God. The rest of them were imperfect. And Jesus endured the hostility of sinners. Now here's Abram. He is a man of God. He's living by faith, and he runs into difficulty. There was a famine in the land, and he begins to falter in his faith, for the famine was severe in the land. And he faltered in his faith to the degree that he went down to Egypt. He left the land of promise. and went down to Egypt. Somebody will say to me, pastor, do you really think that that was a failure in Abram's faith when he went down to Egypt? Yes, because I think what we read about what he did down there in Egypt proves it. He got down there and he got to looking at his wife and seeing how beautiful she was. And I was about to say, some of you men might not want to try this, but I probably better not dig that hole for myself. And he got to worrying about how beautiful Sarah was, and he decided that in order to protect his own life, he better just lie about Sarah. Does this prove that he has faltered in faith, that he's strayed now, the way he conducts himself down there in Egypt? And he wants Sarah to say that she's not his wife, but rather his sister. And he's faltering now. He's faltering. I'm glad Abram is here in the Bible, and I'm glad this particular episode is here in the Bible, because I know about this. I know about this. Faltering. Slipping. Falling. By the way, do you ever wonder sometimes if the Bible is the Word of God? We talked about that this morning. Here is one evidence that the Bible is the Word of God, and that is it is always bluntly honest about its greatest heroes. It doesn't sweep any of the dirt under the rug. Here it tells you that Abram, this man of faith, lied about his wife. I mentioned Moses a while ago. Man of faith? Man of God? Yes. The Bible doesn't sweep anything under the rug about Moses. It says he lost his temper. He struck the rock, you remember, when he was supposed to speak to it. My, what a temper Moses had. He killed that Egyptian fellow. And David, man of God, remember Bathsheba? He faltered in his faith. I know about faltering in faith, don't you? I'm glad this account is here Because when I'm down at the very bottom of my barrel and at the very end of my tether, it tells me that I'm not a hopeless case, that others have been there before me. And thank God there's a way out. And I want to talk to you now about that way out. And here we find Abraham swinging up again. Chapter 13, verse 1, Then Abram went up from Egypt. Now, listen to me. I'll tell you this about yourself, brother in Christ, sister in Christ. It's only a matter of time that you'll get to Egypt. Nobody's mastered this business of living the Christian life. It's only a matter of time before you go down to Egypt. But I'm so glad to be able to add this. If you're a child of God, you won't live in Egypt. You won't stay there. Chapter 13, verse 1, Abram went up from Egypt. Now, you can stay down there a long time. I can draw from the life of Samson here and give you a spiritual principle. And some of you fellows who are having the same struggle that I'm having, you might want to really lay hold to this. The hair grows back. Now, after giving you hope, I've got to take it away from you. I'm talking in the spiritual realm. Okay? The spiritual realm. And I am saying to you, spiritual hair always comes back. Sorry, Bob. Spiritual hair always grows back. I wish I could say the other for my own edification and encouragement. Spiritual hair always grows back. And here is Samson now. It gets down to the bottom of his barrel and the end of his tether, but spiritual hair comes back. And in the last moment of his life, he performs this great heroic act. And there we have the truth about ourselves. We can get down to Egypt as Abram did, but we will not live in Egypt. We'll not stay there. You can stay there a long time, but you'll come back someday. And look at verse 4. Here's Abram coming back. He went back to the place, to the altar which he had made at the first. And there he called on the name of the Lord. Are you down in faith tonight? Down in your commitment? Down in your performance as a Christian? Here's the way back. Call. on the name of the Lord. And 1 John 1, 9 says, if we confess our sins, it's getting late in the day and my mind is failing me. Help me out. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So call. I've been there. You may be there. Bottom of the barrel, the down of faith, there's a way back. Call on the name of the Lord. He freely forgives, and God's