The Faith of Abraham - Glenn Conjurske

Abstract of a Sermon Preached on July 22, 2001

Introduction: The Pre-eminence of Abraham’s Faith

Paul calls Abraham “the father of all them that believe,” obviously not because he was the first who believed, but because of the pre-eminence of his faith. Abraham’s faith, though not perfect, was yet of the sterling sort, and of a high degree also. Not perfect, surely, and it is a most interesting fact that we may learn so much of the ways of unbelief by studying the man of pre-eminent faith. More on that in its place. Meanwhile, we only affirm that as Abraham had great faith, his faith was greatly tried. I have long supposed that the greater our faith, the greater the trial of our faith will be. The Lord never tried anyone in his earthly ministry as he did the woman to whom he said, “O Woman, great is thy faith.” Great faith will bear a great trial, and only shine the brighter, where little faith would faint and fail. The greater our faith, the greater the trial we may expect.

Abraham’s Faith in Romans 4: A Faith Tested Over Time

Paul speaks twice of the faith of Abraham, once in Romans 4 and once in Hebrews 11, and both times in connection with the trial of his faith. Abraham’s faith was subjected to two great trials: first to obtain his Isaac, and then to slay him. These trials were not of the same sort. The first was of a milder nature, but long continued, wearing, and tedious. The second was sharp and short. God subjects our faith to both these kinds of trials.

Of Abraham’s faith we read in Romans 4, “(As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were; who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara’s womb: he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.”

Impatience and Unbelief: The Story of Hagar

I have preached so often on this phase of Abraham’s faith that I need say the less about it this morning. But I observe in the twenty-first verse that he was fully persuaded of the promise. This is the key to all the rest. Without this, he must certainly have broken down. He did indeed break down once, when he took Hagar to be his wife, and thought to procure the promised seed by her. This was the impatience of unbelief. Men are unwilling to wait for God when they have little or no expectation that God will act for them after all. They must be always grasping, running hither and thither, meditating one scheme after another by which they can take themselves what they have no faith to wait upon the Lord for, and almost always compromising in the process, lowering standards, giving up principles, and calling good evil, and evil good. Of all this I have seen a great plenty, for though I have seen many who follow Abraham in his impatience and unbelief, I have seen few indeed who follow him in his faith and patience. And of course all such impatient spirits will call all their schemes and their grasping by the most noble names. This is zeal for the cause of Christ. This is doing the will of God. Waiting upon God they will call by hard names. This is laziness. This is lukewarmness. Yet faith will have its day and its reward, and all those things which unbelief and impatience have obtained by their grasping will prove to be only trouble in the end. So it was with Ishmael.

The Birth of Ishmael: A Result of Unbelief

Ishmael was born of unbelief, and for many years Abraham clung to that scheme of his own, thinking to fulfill the promise of God himself, without any help from God. He must compromise to take Hagar, lower standards, give up holy principles, and of course look about for others who would sustain him in his waywardness, by their example or approval. He would doubtless now plead Sarah’s approval, as much as he should have God’s. But he can have no very strong confidence that God is in the project at all, and he must labor to pawn off his devious plan upon the Almighty. “And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee!” There never was any occasion for him to so plead for Isaac, but he had his misgivings about his own plan, and none of that certainty which belongs to faith. Such was Abraham’s unbelief. But it was not thus that God would be glorified. He had his own plan, and he would not own Abraham’s. His word was, “Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed.” This had been rather assumed than affirmed in the original promise given to Abraham. It was only the impatience of unbelief, on the part of both Sarah and Abraham, which had abandoned that assumption, but now that God affirms it explicitly, Abraham lays hold of it again, and it is on this foundation which he stands when he is a hundred years old. The case is now hopeless, physically and naturally. His own body is now dead—whatever that may mean, though certainly not dead in any technical or absolute sense. I don’t think it can mean anything more than weakened by age. Sarah’s womb is dead also. Her natural cycle is ceased, and she can no more bear children—not that she ever could. It is in such a plight that Abraham hopes against hope, and staggers not at the promise through unbelief. Here it was that he was fully persuaded, both that the promise was of God, and that God was able to perform it.

The Greater Trial: Abraham’s Obedience to God

So sang Charles Wesley of the faith of Abraham, but all this concerns Abraham’s faith to obtain his Isaac. He had a greater trial to come, which required still greater faith. To obtain his son he must look to the promise alone. To slay him he must look to the command alone—and to such a command!

The long, weary years of languishing are over, and he has now entered into his rest and enjoyment, in the possession of the promised seed. The Lord has blessed him, the Lord has kept his word, the Lord has vindicated his faith, the Lord has made him to laugh, and repaid him for all his weary years of waiting. He walks now under the clear blue sky, and basks in the warm sunshine of heaven. But while he does so, a thunderbolt falls upon him without warning, which must have well-nigh overwhelmed him. God saId, “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.”

Two Types of Trials: Endurance and Obedience

This is a trial of an entirely different sort from his weary years of waiting. But the fact is this, there are two great spheres in which our faith must operate. We must have faith to endure, and faith to act—faith to suffer, and faith to obey. God tries our faith in both spheres. The long continued trial was a test of the endurance of Abraham’s faith. This sharp and short one is a test of the obedience of his faith. Both of these trials were extremely difficult to flesh and blood, but we suppose the second required the greater faith. It was hard, no doubt, to wait twenty-five years for his son, but it was a son he had never seen, never known, never loved. It is another matter to slay that son after he is known and loved. God knew this, of course, nor does he make any attempt to shield Abraham from the full force of the trial. Just the reverse. “Take now thy son,” he says, “thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and offer him up for a burnt offering.”

The Necessity of Certainty in Faith

Now observe, there is only one way that Abraham could obey such a command. He must have the absolute certainty that it came from God. He must be fully persuaded that it was God who required this of him. For the faith to endure, he must be fully persuaded of the promise. For the faith to obey, he must be fully persuaded of the command. It is this certainty which gives to faith all its stability and stamina. And we can have that certainty, and we must have it. Without it we will certainly break down under trial. The certainty which we need may encompass more than an explicit command of God, such as Abraham had. We must be “fully persuaded” of our call and commission, sure of our ground. We may act without this—so long as it is easy to act—but we cannot endure. We will break down.

The Importance of Certainty in Faith

A fellow who was going to Peru as a missionary—not, as I suppose, because he was called of God, but because he was restless, and determined to go somewhere—asked me what he should do if he had no success, if people did not support him, and if he found himself useless and friendless and penniless in the place to which he was going. I told him I would not tell him what he should do, but would tell him what he would do. Said I, “If you are certain that God has called and sent you there, you will stick it out, regardless of every difficulty, but if you lack that certainty, you will quit and return home.” He quit and returned home in a year. I believe that if he had walked by faith, he never would have gone out in the first place. By faith he would have endured where he was, endured the years of longing and languishing, as Abraham did waiting for his Isaac, as Moses did in the back side of the desert, as David did in the wilderness. But these restless, unstable souls never walk by faith. They have no “faith and patience”—and no patience because no faith. They have no faith to endure the obscurity of the back side of the desert, but must always be grasping for the throne, the kingdom, the pulpit, the ministry, the limelight, and yet they soon prove that they have no faith to endure that either. What they call faith is nothing but grasping, impatient unbelief.

The Certainty of Faith in Difficult Times

Anybody can act, and endure also, when things are easy. The whole army of Israel can rush to the spoil when the giant is slain, but they stood trembling and paralyzed when he was alive and threatening. It took a David to act, and it was the certainty of faith which enabled him to do so. He knew his divine call, knew his divine ground, and could therefore stand firm on it, giant or no giant. It is for the hard times we need faith. The hard times and the hard commands are the test of faith, and to stand under those tests we must be “fully persuaded” that the ground we occupy is of God. We may have that certainty, and we must have it. It belongs to the nature of faith. But we will not obtain that certainty in the same manner that Abraham did. God will not speak directly to us. We gain our certainty from the Bible, and not necessarily from any direct or explicit command, but from a broad spectrum of principles. Yet our certainty may be just the same as Abraham’s was, and indeed, it must be, if we are to walk by faith.

The Certainty of Faith in Our Walk with God

To Abraham the certainty of faith was a plain necessity, to enable him to act at all, to slay his son. In his long trial of endurance, everything was against him but the promise of God. To that promise he must cling in the face of difficulties, impossibilities, and a quarter century’s contrary experience. It was only the certainty of faith—being fully persuaded of the promise—which enabled him to endure at all. And now, in this sharp and short trial, he needed the same certainty, for here everything was against him but the command of God. Everything—wife, heart, conscience, truth, love, principle, reputation, family, friends, enemies—literally everything would have taken him clean contrary to the obedience of faith; everything, that is, but the command of God. If he had not been fully persuaded that the command was of God, he could not have acted at all.

The Ultimate Test of Faith: God’s Command and Promise

Consider what things stood in the way of his obedience. First, in order to do what was right, he must seemingly do what was wrong. And not only wrong in the eyes of others, but wrong in his own eyes also. Now it was God who put him in this place. It was God who commanded him. It was God who made the trial as severe and difficult as he could make it. And rarely does God ask easy things of us. When he will try the faith of Abraham, it is not “Abstain from candy for three days,” but slay thy son. Do what is not only extremely difficult, but what appears to be wrong. Renounce father and mother, or wife, or children. Disobey your husband. Slay your son. God requires what no man could bring himself to do at all, except for the positive command or call of God. And to act at all in such a case, we must have the certainty that we are called of God to do so. We realize, of course, that God never intended that Abraham should actually slay his son. But Abraham didn’t know that. And it is a plain fact that God sometimes calls us actually to do those things which are seemingly wrong—and things which will certainly be regarded as wrong by others.

Conclusion: The Certainty of Faith in God’s Command

In the next place, therefore, consider the great reproach which would come to Abraham for this act of obedience to God. Abraham had a reputation. He was a godly man, a man of faith, a righteous man, the friend of God, a man who had left all, and gone out not knowing whither he went, to obey the call of God, but all of this will count for nothing when he puts forth his hand to slay his son. All his righteousness and faithfulness, all his sterling character for the past twenty-five years, will be ignored and forgotten, while he is condemned for this one act. Who knows but what Abigail endured the same reproach for aiding the Lord’s anointed? There are some who would overlook all of her obvious goodness, all her transparent sterling worth, while they condemn her for this one thing, that she acted against her husband’s will—and that when he was obviously in the wrong, and when she obviously acted by faith. Hannah may have endured the same reproach, for leaving her son at the temple as soon as he was weaned. Such reproach was sure to fall upon Abraham when he slew his son. It would avail nothing to plead that God led him to this, that God required this of him. He would be told he was mistaken, deluded, insane. He was in violation of the most rudimentary righteousness, and who would believe that God had anything to do with it? It was his pride, his self-will, or some delusion of the enemy, but it was not the will of God, and the perpetrator of such a deed would be condemned even by the best of men, and all his record of godliness forgotten.

The Reproach and Confidence in God’s Command

Such was the reproach which Abraham would have to bear for rendering to God what was God’s, and the only thing which could sustain him in the face of that reproach was the certainty that his course was of God. He was fully persuaded that it was God who required this of him, and therefore he would go forward through thick and thin, through evil report and good report. When his old friends and allies condemned him, he would remain just where he was. Their arguments and their reproaches were alike powerless to move him, for he knew that his course was of God. He was fully persuaded.