“It is fundamental to the nature of faith to take God’s word for things; acceptance on the authority of God is the biblical analysis of faith on its intellectual side.” The truth of this statement by J. I. Packer is nowhere better demonstrated than in the life of Abraham, the great exemplar of faith in both Old and New Testaments. In these days when faith is faltering in both pew and pulpit, we might do well to take a look at Abraham’s faith.
What were the grounds of Abraham’s faith? The answer is simple: the words—or, more specifically, the promises—of God.
When we ourselves are asked to believe certain things on the grounds that they are revealed to us in the Bible, the word of God, we often jib, feeling that we need more evidence. How much easier things would be, we think, if only we could see. Living by sight comes naturally to us, and in an age of science we have become conditioned to seeking tangible proof for everything we are called on to accept.
In Genesis 12, where Abraham’s life story is first told, we read: “Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, ‘To your descendants I will give this land’ ” (v. 7), a promise that was renewed on various occasions later. Consider Abraham’s position once he had received this promise. For a start, he was a mere sojourner in the land, a nomad. In the words of Hebrews 11:9, “he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.” Having camped briefly between Bethel and Ai and built an altar, he then moved on toward the Negeb. He knew in advance that the land was occupied territory, the home of the Canaanites (Gen. 12:6), and this was not a very hopeful sign. We now know that it took hundreds of years and the rise and triumph of Joshua before the promise could be fulfilled.
There were also other factors to disturb Abraham’s assurance. Twice he was driven away from the area by famine to an uncertain existence in Egypt. What was perhaps even more upsetting was the knowledge that his descendants too were to be sojourners in a foreign land (15:13), and slaves to boot! In chapter 14 we learn how the territory was invaded by distant rulers. And when Sarah died he had to buy a plot of ground for her burial place (chapter 23). It appeared that all visible evidence for his cherished belief that his descendants would inherit the land was crushed. Any hope he had left stemmed from the word of God alone.
Furthermore, there was something frustratingly intangible about the promise of God so far as Abraham himself was concerned. It hardly satisfied any selfish personal desires he might have had, for initially the land was pledged not to him but to his descendants. And if we find believing the word of the Lord difficult in the twentieth century, we need to remember that Abraham had far less grounds for confidence than we have. For us the revelation is complete; Christ has already come in the flesh; he has died, risen, and ascended. We have a whole cloud of witnesses, greater even than that known to the writer of the Epistle of the Hebrews. God grant us a faith like Abraham’s to believe the great and wonderful promise of new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells (Isa. 65:17; 2 Pet. 3:13).
Two other promises were made to Abraham that called for the exercise of faith. God told him that he would make him a great nation. (13:16): “I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your descendants also can be counted.” This was a great promise, but one that must have seemed so remote to a man in Abraham’s position. Sarah, his wife, was barren; and as she and Abraham grew old the idea of having a child must have seemed more and more absurd. Sarah especially tended to waver, and she schemed to ensure that the promise would be fulfilled through her slave-girl, Hagar. When told she should bear a child at the age of ninety, she laughed at what seemed to her a fantastic suggestion. But she failed to reckon with God, who is faithful to his word and capable of bringing it to pass, and in due course Isaac was born.
Ahead lay an even greater test. Abraham was told to offer his only son—the very linchpin in the line of succession that was to bring blessing to the world—as a burnt offering on the mountains of Moriah. Once again reason would say that the game was up; the promise and the covenant were both futile. But as Abraham raised his death-dealing dagger, God, the ever-faithful God, stepped in once more, this time to provide a substitute ram for the sacrifice. Abraham’s faith had brought him through the extreme crisis; he had been prepared to risk all for God and to give him his most prized possession.
Surely we need to be ready to exercise a similar faith at critical times today. God has already provided the supreme sacrifice for us—his only Son, and in his case there was no last-minute effort to stay the executioner’s hand. His Son died as a lamb without spot for our sakes and for a multitude that no man can number (Rev. 7:9, 10), so that through faith in him we might be presented faultless before God to rejoice in his presence forever.
The final promise made to Abraham again involved not himself directly but others through him—“in you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (12:3b, RSV margin). Now with the hindsight of more than 3,000 years we know just how true that was. But Abraham had only a word from God to base his faith on, and this appeared to be in constant danger of contradiction. For a start, Abraham, characterized by all the familiar weaknesses common to mortal men, jeopardized the promise through his own vacillation at critical moments. In the interest of self-preservation he twice tried to pass off Sarah as his sister and almost ruined the plan and purpose of God. He had to separate from Lot, partly because both of them had grown prosperous and had many possessions and partly because their respective herdsmen were constantly quarrelling. This did not augur well for the future blessing of “all the families of the earth.” Later Abraham was involved in fights with neighboring kings. Having emerged unscathed from these troubles, he became embroiled in a dispute with Abimelech.
Several lessons of Abraham’s life seem particularly relevant today.
First, if we are to be Abraham’s spiritual children and heirs of the promise, we need to recognize that faith is true only when based on the objective word of God (Gen. 15:6; cf. Rom. 4:3, 9, 22, 23; Gal. 3:6; Heb. 11:8). In an uncertain world, faith as biblically understood is the only foundation for life (John 5:24; Rom. 4:23–25).
Secondly, Abraham was a man of flesh and blood like ourselves and triumphed only after a tremendous struggle. This struggle was poignantly described by Calvin (Inst. II, x, 11) whose own experience was in many ways similar:
He is torn away from friends, parents, and country, objects in which the chief happiness of life is deemed to consist, as if it had been the fixed purpose of God to deprive him of all the sources of enjoyment. No sooner does he enter into the land in which he was ordered to dwell, than he is driven from it by famine. In the country to which he retires to obtain relief, he is obliged, for his personal safety, to expose his wife to prostitution. This must have been more bitter than many deaths. After returning to the land of his habitation, he is again expelled by famine. What is the happiness of inhabiting a land where you must often suffer from hunger, nay perish from famine, unless you flee from it?… He wanders up and down uncertain for many years.… Wherever he goes he meets with savage-hearted neighbors, who will not even allow him to drink of the wells which he has dug with great labour.… Thus, in fine, during the whole course of his life, he was harrassed and tossed in such a way, that anyone desirous of giving a picture of a calamitous life could not find one more appropriate. Let it not be said that he was not so very distressed, because he at length escaped from all these tempests. He is not said to lead a happy life who, after infinite difficulties during a long period, at last laboriously works out his escape, but he who calmly enjoys present blessings without any alloy of suffering.
Thirdly, if we are inclined to be daunted by the prospect of the fight of faith (cf. Heb. 13:13), we need to recall that Abraham was sustained, guided, and kept (cf. 1 Pet. 1:5) by a faithful, merciful, loving, and sovereign God who first gave the word and then ensured its ultimate victory by overruling every weakness in the one to whom he had given it and every thwarting turn of events. Doubt, says Pareus, “has two arguments—will God do this? and can God do this? Faith has also two arguments—God will do it, because he has promised; and he can do it, because he is omnipotent.” In our own battle of faith, as we struggle with our weakness, we should be fortified by the knowledge that many others have faced the same sort of problems and found success.
Finally, just as Abraham was promised that God himself would be his “exceeding great reward,” we should not lightly throw away our confidence (Heb. 10:35); for when Christ who is our life appears, then we also will appear with him in glory.
H. K. Stothard is further education tutor at teh Village college, Peterborough, England. He holds teh B.A. and Certificate of Education from Nottingham University.
