Abraham’s Faith Believed God & Obeyed

Transcript

GR 1593
02/20/11
Abraham's Faith Believed God and Obeyed
Acts 7:1-8
Gil Rugh

We're in Acts 7 in your Bibles. Turn back to John 16. Jesus promised His disciples that following His resurrection from the dead and ascension to the Father, He would send the Holy Spirit to them. Verse 7, “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper shall not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness, and judgment”. So the Holy Spirit will come from heaven to be a helper, a paraclete, one who will come alongside of them and be a helper to them in every way. He will also come to convict the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment. In this same context Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of truth.

Look down in verse 13, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth”. Back up to John 15:26, “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father that is the Spirit of truth”. Back up to John 14:16, “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth”. So that emphasis on the Holy Spirit as the Helper, the one who will be there with them when Jesus Christ returns to heaven, He will be the Spirit of truth. He is the Spirit of truth. He will be with them.

And if you turn over to John 17:17, Jesus in praying to His Father says, “Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth.” And these two facts which join together the Spirit of truth, who has been the one who has communicated the truth of God, the word of God, to man, is the one who will be using that word in the ministry to both believers as their Helper, and to the world as the one convicting the world of sin, righteousness and judgment. And the two areas cannot be disassociated. It's the work of the Holy Spirit using the word of God. So…the one who gave the word of God, for holy men of old spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, Peter wrote in his letter to tell us how the word of God was given. The Spirit of truth gave us the word of God, which is truth. And for us as believers who have Him now indwelling us, He is the one who enables us to understand the truth. And He is the one who convicts the world of sin, righteousness and judgment.

Come over to Acts 7 now. What is going on is the Holy Spirit has come in Acts 2. Christ ascended to heaven in Acts 1; in fulfillment of His promise He sent the Holy Spirit. He came and took up residence in believers in fulfillment of the promise of Christ in Acts 2. These believers now will bear witness in the power of the Spirit as Jesus promised in Acts 1. When the Holy Spirit comes upon them, they would be His witnesses. So we see this unfolding through the book of Acts. What has been going on? The Spirit has been testifying to Christ, not apart from believers, but through believers as they share the word of God, the gospel of Christ.

This is what Stephen is doing in Acts 7. The end of chapter 6 we were told that because of his ministry opposition was stirred. Verse 9 talks about that. Certain unbelieving Jews begin to confront Stephen. They couldn't cope with the wisdom and spirit with which he was speaking, this cutting edge to the word of God. The word of God is comforting and so on, but the word of God is like a sword piercing, as we've talked about. And they are not able to oppose the power of the word of God. So what do they do? They are not brought to their knees and believe the truth, but they are so opposed to the truth and offended by the truth, that they stir up opposition to Stephen. They desire to stop him from telling the truth. The truth is present, now it's the work of the devil to try to keep the truth from being proclaimed.

We've seen the Sanhedrin earlier telling Peter and the other apostles; you are not allowed to speak concerning Christ any longer. But they said we have to continue to obey God and tell the gospel. So they are dragged before the Sanhedrin, the governing body of Israel. They put forward false witnesses, verse 13, claiming that Stephen had spoken blasphemously. He had spoken against the temple; he had spoken against the Law of Moses. And verse 14, “for we have heard him say that this Nazarene, Jesus, will destroy this place and alter the customs which Moses handed down to us.” The offense is the offense of the message of Christ. They don't want to hear it.

So now here is Stephen before the governing body of Israel. We've seen Peter and John, the apostles before this body. We noted they were arranged in a half-circle and the person brought before them stood and addressed this august body of the leaders of Israel. And chapter 7 opens up, “And the high priest said, ‘Are these things so?’” What is unfolded here, is where you are confronted with the word of God there are two possibilities of response. You can either receive it as the truth, and bow in obedience to it, believing, or you can harden your heart and oppose it, and that leads to further animosity and opposition. That's what is going on here.

The high priest is asking, are these things so? They are not searching for truth; they are looking for an occasion and reason to shut Stephen up. What Stephen is going to do is give them a history lesson. And amazing because we are going to walk through this history, just the beginning of it in this study, but then we will make our way through the rest of it in our coming study. And we'll say this is stuff we all know, it's rather simple. And if it's stuff that is well known and obvious to us, think about the Sanhedrin. I mean, this is the governing body of the Jews; these are Jews who have filled their minds with the Old Testament scriptures. But Stephen is going to give them a history lesson; he's going to talk about what God has revealed, and he's going to talk about how the Jews have consistently rejected that revelation. He's going to build his study around four people or events—first Abraham in verses 2-8, then Joseph in verses 9-16, then Moses in verses 17-43, and then the temple in verses 44-50. With the temple, he will talk about David and Solomon in the context of the temple. And then in verses 51-53 Stephen applies it. We like to think we need a lot of application. All Stephen does is unfold the word of God for almost this entire sermon from verse 2 through verse 50, and then he has three verses of application, driving the point home. Of course, the point is being made as he moves along as we'll see.

What he does here does not cover all of Israel's history; he covers about 1,000 years of Israel's history. He is going to pick up with Abraham and he's going to conclude with the temple. That takes us from about 2,000 B.C. to 1,000 B.C. So he doesn't give the whole history down to the coming of Christ as we might think he would. He doesn't even focus in this history on the coming of Christ, as for example Peter has done in his first sermon on the Day of Pentecost where he showed how the coming of Christ, and the death of Christ, and the resurrection of Christ, all fit to what the prophets said. Stephen is not going to come anywhere near that. He is going to simply talk about Israel's history from Abraham to the construction of the temple, prepared for by David and then carried out by Solomon, and then he drives home the point. That will be enough to result in his execution.

“And the high priest said, ‘Are these things so?’” And so Stephen has his opportunity to speak. “And he said, ‘Hear me, brethren, and fathers!’” He was respectful. “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran”. Right away he starts out with who is sovereign here, who took the initiative—God. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham. We have a believing Jew addressing unbelieving Jews. But as we've talked about in our study in Romans, both are descendants of Abraham physically. So our father Abraham, the one he is talking about, is the founder of the Jewish race. But it's God who appeared to Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. Mesopotamia, where did he live? Verse 4, he left the land of the Chaldeans. So we often refer to Ur as Ur of the Chaldeans, because that's the city where Abraham lived when God initially contacted him.

Come back to Genesis 15:7, God speaking to Abraham in a vision. “And He said to him, ‘I am the Lord who brought you out of the Ur of the Chaldeans’”. So it takes us back and that's where Stephen takes us back to, when Abraham lived in Mesopotamia, in Ur of the Chaldeans. Come back to Genesis 11:27, “Now these are the records of the generations of Terah. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran; and Haran became the father of Lot. And Haran died in the presence of his father Terah, in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans.” And you see, that's where we are—Ur of the Chaldeans. “And Abram and Nahor took wives for themselves. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai; the name of Nahor's wife was Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and Iscah. And Sarai was barren; she had no child. And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife; and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans in order to enter the land of Canaan; and they went as far as Haran, and settled there.” And there is where Terah, the father of Abram, dies.

Now you know where we are. Some of you have study Bibles and probably have maps there of the region. If you just left Jerusalem and went straight east pretty much for about 700 miles across the desert, you would arrive at Ur of the Chaldeans. Now since the direct route, if you were going from Jerusalem to Ur, was across 700 miles of desert, that wasn't the normal route. So people went around what we call the Fertile Crescent. They went up north and Haran is about up, as you were traveling from Ur up to the top, following the edge of the desert but in a more fertile region. Then you would be up about the top, where if you went straight across from Haran you would be about at the top of the Mediterranean Sea. Then you could come down. So that was the normal route. When you were going from Mesopotamia you went up and around and down into that region, into what we know of as Israel.

So God calls Abraham when he is in Ur of the Chaldeans; Ur of the Chaldeans because that's the land we know of as Babylon. In fact Ur and we know where the city of Ur is, they have excavated there. And about the time of Abraham was about the time of the height of the flourishing of Ur of the Chaldeans. It is about 220 miles south of Baghdad. We hear a lot about Baghdad. This is where Abram lived; this is where his family lived. And do you know what they were in Ur of the Chaldeans? They were idol worshipers.

Turn over to Joshua 24:2, “Joshua said to all the people, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “From ancient times your fathers lived beyond the River (the Euphrates), Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, they served other gods.” So Abram, or Abraham as we know him, was raised in a family of idol worshipers. “Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River, and led him through all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his descendants and gave him Isaac. ‘To Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau, and to Esau I gave Mount Seir to possess it; but Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt.” So you see here, when God called Abraham, it was out of idolatry. The specifics of that we are not told, but here you see the sovereign intervention of God into a family of idol worshipers to call out Abraham. And he is to leave his family.

As you come back to Acts 7, he leaves his family home. In Acts 7:2, “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran”. Now you'll note here, God's initial contact and call of Abraham took place outside the land of Israel, outside the land of Canaan. He revealed Himself to Abraham. There were people living in Canaan, God could have called one of them. But, He went outside the land, put His hand on Abraham and called him to leave his home and come to the land of Canaan. So that's how he starts out; very simple lesson. Every member of the Sanhedrin could have recited this account without having to look it up in their Old Testament scriptures.

Of course, the God of glory, you see the emphasis here, the God of glory has acted. We're going to start right there with God's action; this will be crucial to what Stephen is doing here. He calls Abraham out of his idolatry, out of his home, calls him to come to Canaan.

Verse 3, He said to him, “Leave your country and your relatives, and come into the land that I will show you.” Stephen is referring here to what we have as Genesis 12:1. There are no explanations here, we see how the Jews just took the scriptures just at face value, and that's what Stephen does. Genesis 12:1, “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father's house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name will be great’” (the Abrahamic Covenant). Verse 4, “So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him; and Lot went with him. Now Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran.” But in Stephen's reference he takes it back to Ur of the Chaldeans. When Abraham left Ur of the Chaldeans with his father and other relatives, he went up to Haran and stayed there, and that's where his father died. Then he came down into Canaan. There is no conflict here, and the Jews see no conflict. Evidently the original call obviously came when Abram was in Ur of the Chaldeans. We saw that repeatedly, that God called him from Ur of the Chaldeans. Now that call might have been repeated when he was in Haran after Terah died. Or it could have been Genesis 12:1 is taking us back to the original call, and so then it is just continuing on from Haran. The original call took place in Ur; it may have been repeated in Haran. It's just chronological as we have unfolding in Genesis 11-12.

Stephen is giving a summary overview here in Acts 7. He is called out of Ur to leave his country; come into the land that I will show you. This is just now the promise of God and all Abraham is to go on is what God says. I mean, that's it. That means you are going to leave your home; there is no indication Abraham had ever been to Canaan. You are going to travel 1500 miles, that's how long it was. About seven hundred miles if you went straight across the desert, but you can't take your herds and families and so on across the desert like that. You go up so it's over twice as long when you are going up over the top and down to avoid the desert, about 1500 miles to travel to Canaan from Ur. All he had was the word of God. Go, leave your family, and leave your home and go. So he did.

Verse 4, “Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, God had him move to this country in which you are now living.” So there is his obedience, he obeyed completely. He left Ur and traveled, going to Canaan. There is no indication Abraham was disobedient because he didn't leave his family totally, there is no indication of that because he didn't have to leave the whole family. He left part of his family obviously in Ur. The fact that his father came with him and went to Haran wasn't a sign of disobedience, and so his father died and his nephew is still going to come down with him. Some of these things are just part of the process going on here.

So he goes from Haran to Canaan, what we're told here, that he went to the land where God had spoken to him. Genesis 12:4 puts it that way. So what you have is Abraham being obedient to the word of God, doing what God tells him. But the faith of Abraham is an ongoing faith; it's a life of faith. He had to leave Ur of the Chaldeans by faith. When he stopped at Haran and was there, we don't know how long, but he had to leave there by faith. I mean, he is coming to a land that God has told him about but what does he have? I mean, you understand this is a man who has had no children, has a wife who is barren; he is leaving everything and traveling to a land that God has promised.

And then verse 5 says, “But He (referring to God) gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot of ground”. You see Stephen driving home the point here; Abraham owned nothing here. And yet even when he had no child, He promised (God promised), that’s why we call it the Promised Land. It's what God promised to Abraham and his descendants; it's the Promised Land. He promised that He would give it to him as a possession and to his descendants after him. All Abraham has are the promises, he doesn't even have a child that might at least give him some confidence that God will do something special here and the land will be passed on. How can you give me a land? I don't own one foot of it, and if I did, I don't have any descendants to pass it on to. All I have are promises, but the promises of God are good, right? They are as good as done.

Come back to Genesis 12. I know this is repetition for you, but it was repetition for the Sanhedrin, too. In fact I have to say as I go through this sermon again and again, I'm amazed at how the Sanhedrin sat here and didn't interrupt him and say, we already know this Stephen. Get to the point. They sit and listen to the history. Obviously the Spirit of God is at work using Stephen. In Genesis 12:7, “The Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I will give this land.’ So he built an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him.” Over in Genesis 13:14, God says to Abram, look all around. All the land you see, I will give it to you and your descendants forever. I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth. Verse 17, “Arise, walk about the land through its length and breadth; for I will give it to you.” Genesis 15:18, “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates’”. Keep in mind, Abraham still doesn't have any children with Sarah. In Genesis 16 Ishmael has come into the picture. Genesis 17:7, “I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. I will give to you and your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession”.

He had no child but God kept promising. You know it is one thing for us to look. Because we've read the end of the story, the last chapter, and God does give him a child and descendants. But Abraham had nothing; he can look back over the years. You know 25 years later he says all I have are the promises, the promises. I don't have any of the land; I don't even have a child with Sarah who could fulfill the promise. But he trusted the Lord. That's why Genesis 15:6 becomes such a foundational verse, he believed God and God credited it to him as righteousness. It's a life of faith. If you are Abraham you come to a strange land, it is occupied, owned and controlled by a foreign people and God keeps telling him, I am going to give it to you. And furthermore, I'm going to give it to you and your descendants. Not only do I not own the land He keeps promising, I don't have any of the descendants He keeps talking about. But he was faithful.

So Hebrews 11:8 uses this as an example of faith. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise. I mean, here I am walking on my land; I just don't own any of it. It's all going to be mine and my descendants', but I don't own any of it and furthermore I don't have any descendants. But he was trusting God.

Back to Acts 7:6, “But God spoke to this effect, that his descendants would be aliens in a foreign land, and that they would be enslaved and be mistreated for 400 years.” Come back to Genesis 15:13, there are these promises and God has promised it is going to be your son that's going to be your heir, because Abraham had begun to think that maybe it will be my servant Eleazer, whatever I have will be transferred to him. God said, no, it will be your son. Verse 13, “God said to Abram, ‘Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed for 400 years. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; and you will be buried at a good old age. Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.’” Then He reiterates the land promise at the end of that chapter. Wait a minute; this is getting worse, more serious. Now you are promising me a land (I don't even own a foot of it), and you're not only promising me this land that I don't own any of, but you are promising it is going to belong to my descendants, of which I have none. Now you are telling me these descendants (of which I have none) are going to possess the land (of which I own none), and are going to be taken off this land (of which we own none). The descendants (which I don't have any of) are going to leave this land and go to a foreign land, not for vacation, but for 400 years to be slaves. And then they'll come back. This is getting to be rather strange. I wonder if I should have ever left Ur in the first place. I mean, there we did have a home; we did have our ground we farmed, or whatever. But there is no indication that Abraham does anything but believe what God says. Four hundred years away, we get tired of waiting for the promise of God for the return of the Lord, but all the promises of God will take place.

So you see what Stephen is doing, he is building the case of the faith of Abraham here by showing each step—leaving Ur, being promised a land that he didn't own any of, being promised descendants when his wife was barren.

Come back to Acts 7:8. After the bondage, they are going to come out as we saw and serve God in the land that He promised. Verse 8, “And He gave him the covenant of circumcision” given in Genesis 17. Abraham has a son with Hagar, the Egyptian woman, when the sign of circumcision is given. Ishmael is 13 years old, Abraham is 99 years old, and Sarah is 89—no son of promise to this point. But the covenant guaranteeing the promises of God to the descendants of Abraham and Sarah is given and Abraham does it, he circumcised his family. The males in his family are circumcised. All he has is what God has said. So Abraham became the father of Isaac. Circumcision took place in Genesis 17, and finally we get to Genesis 18 and we get Isaac. He “circumcised him on the eighth day; Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs”. And now we're going to move to Egypt with Joseph, which we'll have to wait for until the next time.

All Abraham has is the word of God to go on. When Abraham dies he has had a glimmer of hope, he has had a son with Sarah, Isaac. He can see something but he still doesn't have possession of the land. He won't live to see the multiplication of his descendants of course, because they are going to be in Egypt 400 years. But he has the promises of God, and you see how quickly he moves, how God is fulfilling His word. We have the twelve patriarchs; you see how the expansion comes out and Stephen is ready to move on to the next phase.

Now he's just not giving a history lesson as we have been unfolding here. Just note the points that he has made, to reiterate them with you—the sovereignty of God in His dealings with Israel. He appeared to Abraham when he was living outside the land of Canaan, when he was a pagan idol worshiper (as Joshua 24 had said). He is the God of glory who initiated the contact by appearing to Abraham. Abraham believed God and obeyed God, and left his home in Ur. Thirdly, Abraham believed the revelation of God's promises when he owned none of the land and didn't have a son (that was in verse 5). He didn't even have a foot of the ground and he had no child. But God promised; that's what Abraham had, I have the promise of God. Fourth note, Abraham believed the promises of God when he was told it would be over 400 years before his descendants would take possession of the land. It’s remarkable how God works, to uproot Abraham and move him to the land. But He's not going to give him the land, not give his descendants the land for 400 years. In fact, He's going to take Abraham's descendants out of the land to build them into a nation, a mighty people, a great people, and then bring them back into the land. But you see the sovereign hand of God. What was He doing? Why didn't He just have Abraham have those descendants in Ur of the Chaldeans? Because they would have gotten mingled in with the people there. When the twelve patriarchs are taken into Egypt, they are going to be isolated there and thus the people's identity preserved.

Another note about Abraham, verse 8, Abraham believed and obeyed God regarding circumcision as the sign of the covenant that God has established with him and his descendants. Abraham believes what God said He would do in giving him descendants before he has Isaac, about the land before he owns any of the land. He believed God as Genesis 15:6 says, “and his faith was credited to him as righteousness”.

Turn over to Romans 4, verse 9 and forward. Abraham is used as an example and God declared him righteous in Genesis 15 before he was circumcised. But the circumcision is the sign of the covenant that God established between Abraham (that will be given in Genesis 17). But Abraham is a man of faith, walking by faith, and he becomes the example for Jew and Gentile alike. Romans 4:5, “But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness”. So what we are doing here (the initial point of Stephen's sermon), is establishing the God of glory appeared to Abraham and Abraham responded to God in faith, and he consistently responded to God in faith. When he gets to the conclusion of his sermon he is going to draw the application of the fact, you have not responded to God in faith. Rather you have followed the pattern of those in Israel and Israel's history who have manifested rebellion.

It’s the same points God makes today. John 3:36, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” So Abraham is an example for the Jews, but he is an example for us. What do we have? Peter says in the last days mockers will come saying, where is the promise of His coming? We've been looking for His coming for a long time, I'm sure He is coming. How do I know? I'm going to heaven. How do I know? I've never seen heaven. I know to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. How do I know? I've never been absent from the body and present with the Lord and neither have you. What do we have? The promises of God, right? What more do we need? What more did Abraham need? So it is for us in troubles and trials and difficulties and discouragements, what do we have? The promises of God, that's enough. That's secure, that guarantees that it will happen. I may not live to see it happen, everything God has promised, but I will ultimately enjoy all that is promised even as Abraham will because God is true to His word.

Let's pray together. Thank you, Lord, for the testimony of Abraham. Thank you for that ongoing testimony. Thank you for the way your Spirit used Stephen to bring before your people Israel the testimony of Abraham, whose life of faith continues to bear testimony. Lord, we are reminded of how sure your promises are. We are a people who walk by faith and not by sight. We walk believing what you have said, believing what you have promised, because you are a God whose word cannot fail. We have already experienced a taste of the blessings that are ours in Christ, and Lord, they just are an assurance to us of the coming blessings that you've promised to all those who love Him. May we be faithful in our service for you in the days before us. May this week be a great week as we are testimonies of your grace, of the gospel of Jesus Christ wherever we are. We pray in Christ's name, amen.