Abraham: Faith that Looks Forward
Hebrews 11:8-10, 13-16
Admit it. We’ve all dreamed of escaping our daily routine and walking off into the wilderness to explore the great unknown. The truth is, we all need a bit of time by ourselves every once in a while, and that’s exactly what luxury travel agency Black Tomato offers.
Their “Get Lost” service is the ultimate trip for anyone looking to get away from it all – especially if your idea of fun is being dropped in the middle of nowhere with only a backpack, a GPS tracker, and a toothbrush. Travelers are then tasked with the daunting job of navigating their way back towards civilization – a challenging but ultimately rewarding experience for those hoping to embrace their inner nomad.
Black Tomato introduced the concept – a kind of a blind date for vacations with “Survivor” elements – in 2017. Cofounder Tom Marchan, who came up with the idea of getting clients “lost,” thought of it when he thought about ways his company could help people truly relax in an age of digital distractions. He said: “Could we create an experience that requires total mental and physical focus? By being totally distracted, it’s almost impossible for them to think about the day-to-day, everything at home.”
With Black Tomato’s guidance, travelers can choose how lost they want to feel, and how surprised they want to be by their destination. In most cases, travelers don’t know where they’re going until they receive flight information; if they fly private, they might step off a plane with no clue where they are.
For Esther Spengler the only requirements she had were going somewhere warm and far away from the United States. She saved up for the 10-day trip to Morocco, which she said cost roughly $13,000. Her adventure began when she flew to Marrakesh and continued by car into the mountains. After a couple of days of training – learning navigation, fire-starting, and how to put up her own shelter – she was on her own for three days.
Despite bloodied toenails and a tricky time setting up her tarp shelter, she was thrilled with the experience. “It turned out really, really incredible and so much more than I could imagine.”[i]
Any takers? Anyone going to reach out to Black Tomato and book a trip? If you did, and money was no object, would you want to pick your own destination, or have them surprise you? Who would let them pick your destination and surprise you?
I think one of the most common images or metaphors we have for life is of life as a journey. We’ve all heard the phrase, “Life’s a journey. Enjoy the ride.” Winnie-the-Pooh famously said, “Life is a journey to be experienced, not a problem to be solved.” And of course there is J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous quote, “Not all those who wander are lost.”
The image of life as a journey bleeds over into our thinking about the life of faith too. Life with Christ and in Christ. We hear people talk about their “walk with Christ” or “walk with God.” A walk assumes a destination. You’re going somewhere. You may forget what that somewhere is when you get up and walk down the hall, but at one point you did have a destination. You still do, you just don’t know what it is anymore. We talk about “following Christ.” Following someone is something we do on a journey. We’re following someone or walking with someone toward a destination.
Abraham, perhaps more than any other person, understood both life and faith as a journey. He received promises from
God that were far beyond his own ability to bring into being. In fact, aside from his faith, he was very poorly qualified to play the role that God had for him to play. Turn with me to Hebrews 11:8-10.
The Old Testament book of Genesis tells us that Abraham lived in or near the city of Ur. Ur was located on the Euphrates River in what we today know as southern Iraq. And Ur was already an ancient city in Abraham’s time. The people of Ur had developed an elaborate system of writing and sophisticated mathematical calculations. They had educational facilities and kept extensive business and religious records.
Ur was dominated by a massive, three-staged Ziggurat built by Ur-Nammu at the beginning of the second millennium BC. A ziggurat is kind of shaped like a pyramid, but instead of the sides ascending relatively smoothly, they step up, and this ziggurat had three distinct steps, or stages. And each stage was a different color, with the top level carrying a silver, one-roomed shrine of Nammu, the moon-god.
Excavations of the royal cemetery indicate that ritual burials were sealed with human sacrifice. Ur was very advanced, but also very dark and in bondage to paganism. In fact, Joshua 24:2 tells us that Abraham himself was worshiped Ur’s false gods and was a part of Ur’s typical social and religious structure. “And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods.”
But when Yahweh, the Great I Am, the God who Is, called Abraham, Abraham responded in faith. And Abraham’s turn to faith in God was dramatic, because he went from being a moon-god worshipping pagan to a faithful follower of Yahweh in very short order. You’d think that when the living God calls, the non-existent voices of the non-existent false gods would fade into the background. Sadly, that isn’t the case. Both scripture and human history are overflowing with those who ignore the voice and presence of the living God to chase after dead, false idols.
We have false idols today too. We don’t view them as such. But they are very much false idols. And we too ignore the voice and presence of the living God to chase after them. Money, pleasure, and power are the three false gods we bow to, the false gods we chase after. False gods always mimic what only the living God can provide – security and significance. But we look for these things anywhere we can find them other than in Christ. Abraham recognized the real thing when it called. And God is calling out, reaching out to each one of us.
Yes, many of us have, like Abraham, said “yes” to his call. Yes to the journey of faith in Christ. But we still get off track. When push comes to shove, we look for security and significance in other places, pursuing money, pleasure, and power while we try to sort of, kind of, follow Jesus at the same time. And that doesn’t work. The journey of faith requires us to put ourselves fully into his hands. To trust him fully and completely with all that we have and are and need.
Now, look at V. 8. The life of faith isn’t just an initial “yes” to Christ and then a return to life as it was, with a little bit of Jesus added in. After the initial “yes” to God’s invitation to relationship, to do life with him, to accept Christ’s death on the cross on your behalf, faith continues to say “yes” to Christ every day. You see, faith obeys. And that isn’t always easy. In fact, most of the time, its downright hard. It doesn’t make sense. Not to the people around us, and often not to our own minds either.
The great reformer Martin Luther, talking about Abraham, said, “It was hard to leave his native land, which it is natural for us to love. Indeed, love for the fatherland is numbered among the greatest virtues of the heathen. Furthermore, it is hard to leave friends and their companionship, but most of all to leave relatives … And then it is clear that with his obedience of faith Abraham gave a supreme example of [a faithful] life, because he left everything and followed the Lord. Preferring the Word of God to everything and loving it above everything.”[ii]
If we’re going to claim to follow Jesus, then we have to actually follow Jesus. 1 John 2:6 says, “whoever says he abides in him (Jesus) ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” No, we cannot do that perfectly. When we blow it, and realize we’ve blown it, we repent and accept forgiveness and continue on. And as we grow in Christ. As we journey with Christ and Christ is “formed in us,” as St. Paul says, (Gal. 4:19), we do grow in our ability and desire to obey. To actually follow Jesus. To “walk in the same way in which he walked.” And don’t think that’s some kind of boring life. That’s one of Satan’s biggest lies … that life in Christ is boring.
Life in Christ is the life you were created for! The adventure you were created to live! If you’ve ever met someone actually following Jesus, stiff and boring is the last thing you could say about their lives. Obeying Christ and seeing him come through in very real and powerful ways over and over and over again is anything but boring. Life becomes miraculous in ways you could never have anticipated.
Look at V. 9. When we obey God, when we walk through this life with Jesus, on the journey with him, walking as he walked, we kind of stop fitting in. Abraham said yes to God, and then left home, not knowing where he was going, and then stopped where God told him to stop, because that’s what God told him to do. Abraham obeyed, and found himself living as a foreigner in the land God had promised to give his descendants, of which he had none at this time. He lived there in the land of promise not in permanent dwellings but in tents, as resident aliens in a foreign land. He lived in land, but he was not of that land.
That is language the Bible uses of all who follow Christ. In John 17:15-16, Jesus is praying, and he says, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.” We live in this world, but when we place our faith in Christ wholly, and start following him daily, we stop being “of” this world. If you look at Abraham’s life, he was very involved in local politics and business there in the land of Canaan. He got involved in regional security and had business dealings with people. But he was never “of” Canaan.
As followers of Jesus, we live in but are not of this world. We live here as resident aliens. And because we are obedient to Christ, because we are citizens of the Kingdom of God living as resident aliens in this world, we don’t usually fit in. Not completely. Why? Because it is no longer this world but Christ who defines us. We no longer seek security and significance chasing after the gods of this world, the gods of money, pleasure, and power.
We now find our security in Christ. Some of us do have money. And some of us do find ourselves in positions of power and influence in this world. But we do not find our identity and security there. We find them in Christ, and Christ alone. And that leads to a different kind of relationship with pleasure, power, and money. We use them differently. And we pursue only Christ.
Look at V. 10. Faith is building our lives on the truth that God’s power for the present is real, and that his promise for the future is secure. Abraham said “yes” to God’s call and then began to live in obedience to him. He didn’t always get it right. No Christ-follower ever has. He made some significant mistakes. But he sincerely sought to please God and when he messed up, he repented and sought forgiveness. And following God led to him living Canaan and in this world as a resident alien. He didn’t always fit in. His life didn’t always make sense to the people around him. But he stayed faithful.
He knew that God’s call wasn’t even really about the land. Notice that the word “land” doesn’t actually appear in this passage. It keeps using the word “place.” He lived in a “foreign land,” but he knew that what God ultimately had for him, and for all who would come after him in faith, was an eternal place. He was looking ahead, looking forward, not to “a” city, but to “the” city that has real foundations. When we use the word “a,” we mean one of many. When we use the word, “the,” we mean one of one.
The only real foundation for life is Christ, and the only place you can strive for, look forward to, that has a real foundation, “THE city that has foundations,” the only place that has any foundation at all, is the one God has made and is bringing us to. We live IN this world and we were made to live IN this world, but once we place our faith in Christ and begin to follow him, we become OF another place. A heavenly city. And it is founded. Secure. Steady. REAL. It isn’t an ethereal place. In fact, when we get to that place that God has for us in his presence, it will feel more real and more secure and more grounded than any place in this world has ever felt. It is THE city, the ONLY city, with any foundation at all. It is real. It is secure. And it is where Christ is bringing you.
Now skip down a couple of verses to Vv. 13-16. Abraham died without ever seeing the fullness of God’s promise to him fulfilled completely. He had gone to a new place, a land that God would give to his descendants, who were supposedly going to be more numerous than the stars. But he had only two sons. And only one that was mothered by Sarah, his wife. Only one. His too numerous to count descendants were just one when Abraham died. The only land he actually owned was the cave of Machpelah that he had bought off of its Canaanite owner.
But Abraham grounded his life deeply in the faithfulness of God, knowing that God would bring to fruition all that he had promised. He would fulfill the promise largely through Moses and Joshua, and ultimately in Christ. God is still fulfilling his promise to Abraham, because all of us who follow Christ are, by faith, children of Abraham. If you follow Christ, you are living proof of God’s faithfulness to Abraham. Abraham never saw all that. But he died knowing that God would do it. Faith finishes.
But we get to see Abraham’s descendants grow. As we follow the family of Abraham through the book of Genesis, we come to his grandson Jacob, who was renamed Israel, and we know that Jacob had a son Joseph who wound up second in command in Egypt, answering only to Pharoah himself. And that Joseph moved his father’s family to Egypt to be close to him and to protect them from the famine.
Genesis 46:27 tells us that Joseph had two sons in Egypt, and that Jacob brought 66 more with him into Egypt. In two generations, Abraham’s descendants had grown from one to 70 people in total. By modern standards that’s impressive, but 70 isn’t exactly an innumerable legacy. Most of us can count to 70. God had promised Abraham that his descendants would be too numerous to count.
Ah, but if we flip over to Exodus 12:37, we find that in their 430 years in Egypt, Israel had grown from just 70 people to 600,000 men, plus women and children. Somewhere between 2 and 3 million people by most estimates. And then, when we flip over to Numbers 1:46, we find God ordering a census to be taken of just the men of fighting age, just the men aged 20 and older. At that point there were 603,550 men of fighting age in Israel. Folks, the long lists of numbers in the Old Testament … they matter! In them we see God fulfilling a promise made to a pagan moon-god worshipper named Abram that he would make his descendants too numerous to count. And you, today, are part of that count!
God. Is. Faithful. Our faith is in a faithful God who will fulfill every promise he has made. His power is present now, though we can’t see it. And he is bringing you and I and all who follow Christ, trusting him wholly, to THE place, THE city, THE only city with foundations, that he has for us. To be with him. Forever. And so faith says yes, and then keeps saying yes. Faith obeys. Faith obeys even though we don’t typically fit in completely in this world. And faith finishes, knowing that God is bringing us home. Let’s pray.
[i] Adapted from Ed Caesar, “The New Luxury Vacation: Being Dumped in the Middle of Nowhere,” The New Yorker (11-22-21); Ben Horton, “Meet the travelers who pay to get lost in the middle of nowhere,” EuroNews (12-20-21)
[ii] Martin Luther
