Living on the everlasting love. Living, living. Save and heal
the world. Living, living. Living on the
everlasting love. That wonderful old song, we haven't
sung that in a long time, taken from Deuteronomy 33, verse 27,
the eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting
arms. And we sung that great hymn that
we rarely sing, God of Abraham Praise. Abraham is our subject. Look
with me to Hebrews 11. I'm going to read verses 8 through
10 with me. By faith, Abraham, when he was
called to go out into a place which he should after receive
for an inheritance, obeyed, and he went out. Not knowing whether
he went, by faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in
a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles or tents. with Isaac
and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked
for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God."
I don't know if the title caught your attention this morning or
not. Tent dwellers. Tent dwellers. That's what Abraham
was, Isaac, Jake. Tent dwellers. Hope that caught
your attention. This may sound similar to last
Sunday's message on Moses. This same chapter, Moses, because
same subject. And it's the same faith, you
see. Abraham is mentioned around 75
times in the New Testament alone. Abraham is called the father
of the faithful. Father of the faithful, that
is, from his loins, from his lineage, his line, God's people
came, his elect. Israel, God of Abraham, he said,
I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who is Israel. And what this is telling us is
that God is the God of election. That God chose His people, whom
He would. He chose Abraham out of Ur of
the Chaldeans. And then His sons, two sons,
remember? Ishmael and Isaac. He chose Isaac,
right? And then out of His sons, Jacob
and Esau, Jacob have I loved. The God of election. God's people. are his elect. And over in Galatians chapter
3, it says this, Galatians 3 verse 7, look at this with me, Galatians
3, Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, that is,
believe what Abraham believed, rather who, the same are the
children of Abraham. Verse 9, so then they which should
be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. You are, if
you believe, you are a son of Abraham, a daughter of Abraham. Alright? Now Abraham, as we said,
is the father of the faithful, and he believed exactly, though,
what Abel believed, didn't he? When the Lord gives those examples
of faith, In Hebrews 11, it begins with Abel, with Enoch, with Noah,
doesn't it? Well, they all believe the same
thing. They all believe the same thing. What did Abel believe?
And I got stuck there last Sunday with Abel, but it's a good place
to say it. Abel brought the blood, didn't
he? The very first example of faith, saving faith, was the
blood. What did Enoch believe? What
did Noah believe? What did Noah do right after
he came off of that ark? Sacrificed animals, blood, shed
blood. Abraham believed the same. Faith,
now here's, some of you weren't here last Sunday, so you didn't
hear this, and this will be repeated. It's not grievous to me. Alright? Faith believes God. Verse 6 here says, without faith
it's impossible to please Him, for he that cometh to God must
believe that He is. Faith believes that God is God.
Not trying to be. But He is God. This is the first
thing that God reveals to all His people. I am God. There is
none else. I am the Lord, the living and
true God. Faith believes God's Word. All
of God's elect, like Abraham, Moses, they believe God is God. There is no other. And He's God.
They believe His Word. Let God be true, and every man a liar. Right? The wisdom of this world is foolishness.
With every one of God's people, that's what they say. Let God
be true. His word is true. Faith believes
God's Son. This is a three-point. Believes
God is God. Faith believes God's word, takes
him at his word, regardless of what man says, and believes God's
Son. Faith believes that God's Son
is the way. the truth and the life. No man
cometh unto the Father but by him. Nobody gets to heaven but
by Jesus Christ. That's faith. In a nutshell,
it's faith. Faith means to trust. Faith means to depend upon. Faith
means to have confidence in. Do you remember Wednesday night,
the watchword of the Reformation. Do you remember what the old
Luther and all of them would say? John Knox and Calvin, do
you remember? Do you remember what he said? Scriptures alone. This is what the Lord instilled
on the hearts of all. He brought out a pagan, dark
religion. Scriptures alone. God's word
alone. Grace alone. Salvation by grace
alone. Not work. Right. Faith alone. Christ alone. Commit that to
memory. Some people died for pessimism. They died. Burned at the stake.
Standing at the stake while they burnt their bodies, literally.
saying, no sir, I don't accept what this man in Rome says, I
accept what God in heaven says. I believe God is true. Christ alone, faith alone, grace
alone. Faith believes God. Faith believes
God's Word. Faith believes God's Son. Nothing
more, nothing less. That's faith. It's a faith of
God's elect. Scripture says, the faith once
delivered to the saints, meaning it's not of yourself, it's a
gift. He gives it. Delivered to the
saints. What saints? All of them. Beginning
with Abel. For our sakes this morning, beginning
with Abraham. He's called the father of the
faithful. Because the way that God called
Abraham is the way He calls us. Every one of us. You remember
us looking at that? Abel, Enoch, Noah. We all, in the same way, go through
the same call. Well, Abraham was called. Called
by God. Look at verse 8. It says, God,
by faith, it wasn't of himself, but God gave him this faith when
he was called to go out. When he was called to go out.
Scripture says, out of darkness, out of death, out of idols. Abraham was an idolater. He was
raised in a family full of idolaters. They had a God, but it wasn't
the living and true God. It's a God that their father
believed and somebody made up. It wasn't the living and true
God, Brother John. An idolater. God called him.
brought him forth, turned him from his idols to do what? To serve the living and true
God. I just quoted 1 Thessalonians
1. He does that for all of his people. All of them are called
out of their idols, out of their father's house. Just because
dad believes it doesn't mean it's so. It's so because God
says it. Who got it? He left his city,
he left his country, he left the world. And the gospel call
is the same today. Come out from among them. I quoted
that in Hebrews 13 to you. It says, Let us go forth therefore
unto him without the camp. Do you read Brother Ralph Barnard's
article in the Bulletin? He said in that article, as an
old faithful gospel preacher who came barnstorming through
the southeast, he heard the gospel from him, and every church we
know of is a result, an indirect result of that man. God sending
a John the Baptist into the southeast with this message of sovereign
grace to a bunch of idol worshipers. God is God. Come out from among them, bearing
his reproach." Old Brother Barnard bore his reproach. He did. He was literally thrown out of
towns and so forth and beaten up. He left the world. Gospel call, come out from among
them. Gospel call is out of darkness into his marvelous light. Out
of ignorance into knowledge. Out of tradition into the truth. Out of pagan, man-made religion,
into the truth of God. Out of the world, into the kingdom
of His dear Son. Out of self, into Christ. Come out. Come out. Come out. And that gospel call
says, Scripture says, who he did foreknow, that is, he loved
before. He loved Abraham before he was
born. Long before that. Before the
world began, he loved Abraham. Set his affection on Abraham. And said, one day I will call
that man who is 75 years old. Well, like our dear Virgie. She
was a daughter of Abraham, wasn't she? In fullness of time, God
called that old woman to himself, just like Abraham, come out. It says Abraham obeyed. When?
When God said, get out. There in Genesis 12, that's what
it said. Abraham went out. Why? Because
God had said, get out. He wouldn't have come otherwise.
Because he's the good master and his sheep come. Good shepherd,
his sheep come when he calls them. And it says in verse 8
of our text, it says that by faith he went out into a place
which he should have to receive for inheritance. He obeyed and
he went out. And you know, as I said, it's
not as if Abraham deserves honor for obeying, nor do we, do we? Because it is God who works in
us both to will and do. And it is God that by His power
makes us willing in that day and time. He said, Come out.
And Abraham departed. Bless the sovereign, powerful
call of the Lord. Blessed be His wonderful gospel
call. When He calls, you obey. Or else
we would not. When he says get, you get. When
he says go, you go. When he says come, you come.
When he says sit, you sit. When he says lie down, you lie
down. Blessed be his name. When he says repent, you will
repent. When he says believe, you will
believe. When he says call on me, you
call. Salvation is of the Lord. Alright,
what did Abraham believe? What did he believe? Go back
to John chapter 8 with me. Our Lord Himself tells us what
Abraham believed. He was talking to a bunch of
sons of Abraham, they thought. John 8. All these fellows claim
to be sons of Abraham, but they're not if they don't believe what
Abraham believed. John chapter 8. Look at it. This is the Lord Jesus Christ
speaking. They answered him, verses 39
and 40. These are the Pharisees. They answered and said unto him,
Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, if you
were children, Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham. Now you seek to kill me, a man
that hath told you the truth which I have heard of God. This
did not Abraham. What's the first work of God?
What did the people say? John, what did they say to him?
What must we do to work the works of God? What did he say? This
is the work of God, that you believe on Him. The first thing
God called Abraham to do was to believe. When God said, get
out, he didn't say, but why? But I want to prove it. He believed, didn't he, John?
He believed. No questions asked. The Lord explained it to him
after that. But he believed God. Look down at verse 56. Look at this. Your father Abraham
rejoiced to see my day. Christ said, Barbara, Christ
said, Abraham rejoiced to see my day, the coming of me, the
Lord Jesus Christ. And he saw it, and he was glad. Verse 58, He said, Verily, verily,
I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. What did Abraham believe? He believed Christ. He knew,
he believed, he rejoiced in the Lord Jesus Christ. Didn't he? When God revealed
Him, listen, this is how He saves everyone. Same as he did Abraham. When God called Abraham and revealed
to him, I am God, Abraham says, I didn't know you. I had one. He wasn't God at all. When God revealed himself to
Abraham, he said, I have chosen you. You didn't choose me. Now you know who God is, the
one that does the choosing. You didn't choose me, did you,
Abraham? No, sir. No, sir. Thank you, God, for
choosing me. Elect according to the foreknowledge
of God. When God Almighty revealed himself
to Abraham, he said, I will give you a son who will be born of
God, a son of promise, in whom all of my people will be called. Isaac. Christ. Christ, just like God. You know,
God told Adam who that seed of woman was. This is the seed,
seed of Abraham. Paul over in Galatians said,
no, that seed is Christ, son of promise, in whom all of God's
people will be blessed. And that son represents God's
son, Isaac, who will come live as a substitute. And one day,
One day, God revealed that by experience to Abraham. Our Lord said, Abraham rejoiced
to see my day. He saw it. Oh, he was so glad. It was the best news he'd ever
heard. And that day, he experienced
it. Grace is an experience, not just
the head knowledge. He may have had it in his head
a little while, but one day, Found over in Genesis 22. Brother Walter Gruber once said,
if you can't preach from this, you can't preach. Just give it
up. Over in Genesis 22, the Lord
said, Abraham, take your son, not only son Isaac whom thou
lovest, and take him up onto a mountain and offer him as a
burnt offering unto me. And that's all he said. So Abraham saddled his ass, rose
up early, got two men with him, got his son, got the wood, lit
a fire on a stick, got the wood for a burnt offering, fire, and
he and Isaac started up that mountain. And they went up to that mountain,
and on the way up that mountain, Are you telling me Abraham doesn't
know the gospel? On the way up that mountain,
Isaac, his sons, who knew more than most people, he said, Father,
here, my son. He said, Father, here's the wood.
Here's the fire. Where's the lamb? Father, we're
going to worship God. approach a holy God without lamb,
without the blood, there's no remission of sin. We heard this,
Father, from Adam, from Abel, from Enoch, from Noah. We've
heard this all along. Lord, Father, we have to have
a lamb for a burnt offering, a substitute. Father, where's
the lamb? Abraham said, Son, God will provide
himself a lamb for a burnt offering. Jehovah Jarrah. That's his name. Okay, Dad. And off they went. And they went up onto that mountain,
and Abraham took his son, whom he loved, his only son, and bound
him, his son who was free, his son who willingly offered himself,
his son, he bound him with cords, cords of love, cords of a man,
and put him on that altar and took the knife and started to
plunge it into his beloved son's breast, and lo and behold, A
voice from heaven cried out, Abraham, Abraham, stay your hand. Touch not the lad. Now I know
that thou lovest me. And they looked. Abraham heard bleating of sheep. The cry of a male lamb, a ram,
caught by his horn, by his own power, in a thicket behind him. And he looked, and he saw Jesus
Christ, the substitute. And he laid hold of that ram,
and he untied his son. Isaac goes free. He lays hold
and apprehends this sacrifice. Isaac doesn't have to die, but
this ram will die. And he took and he laid that
ram on that altar and he killed that ram and that ram died, but
now Isaac lives. By the shedding of that ram's
blood, Isaac goes free. And they both went down that
mountain that day praising God for his substitution, for sending
some day, didn't know his name was Jesus, but he knew he was
the Christ, the substitute, the Messiah, the Lamb slain before
the foundation of the world. Yes, Abraham rejoiced to see
my day, Christ said. He saw it. Oh, he was so glad. My son's alive because that ram
was killed in his stead. That's the gospel. That's the
gospel. In the stead of substitution. Substitution. In Isaac's stead. Oh, my. That's what he believed. That's who he believed. Who he
believed. Oh, my. I go back to our text
in Hebrews 11. Now, here's how he lived. He
lived by faith. He lived by faith. Look at verse
9. It says, By faith he sojourned in the land of promise. By faith
he sojourned. The word sojourn means to dwell
as a guest, to be a foreigner, to be a stranger. It means wherever
you stay, you don't own it. You're a guest. You've been given
permission, but you're just passing through. That's what sojourn
means. And it says, he and his son Isaac
and his Jacob, all who were heirs of the same promise, they all
dwelled in tents. They were tent dwellers. Abraham never erected a permanent
dwelling place. Can you imagine? I laughed at
this and thought, Oh my, you imagine what a hardship that
would be. You ladies, Sarah, Sarah did too. You imagine trying
to keep a dirt floor clean? All the time. All that picking
up and moving. You think we've moved a lot of
times, haven't you? Sarah Moore. Lots of times. They moved. No,
we're not moving again, surely. Here we go. Why? Why? Because this is not our
home. You see what we're going to get
at now? Tent dwellers. All the children
of Abraham are tent dwellers. You read with me, with Brother
Wesley, The Feast of the Tabernacles. I hope you listened carefully.
as a blessing, says everyone born in Israel would observe this Feast of the
Tabernacle. Tents, booths, everyone born
in Israel would do this. And everyone born again is a
tent dweller. A tent dweller. Well, here's
what the Feasts of the Tabernacles were. What? Okay? After the Passover, that was
the first feast, Passover. You know, when the Lord brought
them out? I want you to turn back there.
Leviticus 23 that he read, so you need to look at it again
in case you missed it. Leviticus 23. But after the Passover,
the Lord ordered that all the Jews would erect Tents, booths
they're called, little booths, little tents, little temporary
dwelling places. And later on, you read with him
how that when they were in Jerusalem, had homes in town. It says they put them on the
roof. Remember? Or out in the court. If they had a yard, they'd all
put their little tent up in the yard once a year. Put a little
tent up in the yard. If you had a house in town, no
yard, you'd put it on your roof. And they'd sacrifice the Passover,
and everybody would sit in their little tent and eat the Passover. And it says they all just had
such a big time. They just loved it. Why? What's this all about? It's not
just some little superstitious, traditional ordinance or ceremony. Look at it. It says in verses
42, Verse 42, Leviticus 23, you shall
dwell in Booth seven days. All that are Israelites born
shall dwell in Booth, little tent, that your generations may
know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in Booth when
I brought them out of the land of Egypt. And back in our text
it says, they are all strangers and pilgrims on the earth, all
these that live by faith. They were strangers and pilgrims,
sojourners, passing through, and they that believe what Abraham
believed declare plainly that they seek a country, another
country. As builder and maker is God,
they desire a better country, a heavenly. And God is not ashamed
to be called their God. He has prepared for them a permanent
dwelling place. So that's what they did. They
were to have these little tents to remind them that they're passing
through. Yes, you've got a home that you
live in, but it's not your permanent home. Boy, was that not made
clear to us recently. Brother Mack, Brother Kelly,
was that not painfully made clear to us when we went to Pikeville?
Oh, a little rain. Little rain can wash it all away.
All these things that we accumulate, God giveth us all things richly
to enjoy, but we can't keep them. It is certain, Job said, that
we can take nothing with us. We've got nothing in this world.
It's going to pass away. When we were down there, Everything
they had in their home, nearly everything in the church building
was piled up in a pile almost as high as the gutters on the
church building, covered with filth, refuge, garbage, hauled
away, worthless stuff. I came away from there deciding
I was going to put a little sign up in my garage, in my workshop,
Everywhere I could see it, it says, it's just stuff. It's just a bunch of stuff. And what about this? This is a tent, an earthly tabernacle
that we're all going to lay down, aren't we? When John and Rick
and I erected that tent, Did we drive those stakes, Rick,
down to the ground? No, no, we didn't want to do
that. Never get them out. The old saying, don't drive them
too deep. Fact is, we did, didn't we? As
the fact of the matter is, being ignorant tent erectors that we
were, the first one we really erected a real tent, a man's
tent. We drove them too deep, didn't we? That didn't get them
out. Thankfully, the ground was wet. But the old saying, don't
drive your stakes too deep. Make them mighty tough. Get them
out. Brother Scott Richardson talked
about the things of this world are a rose. It's beautiful to
look at, to enjoy the fragrance and smell and all of it, but
don't... cause you great pain in letting
go. You can't keep it. You can't keep it. Passing through. All this is stuff. But you know,
our Lord, here's the gospel to it. It says He tabernacled among
us. He took a tent. This is written of in Leviticus
26. It's written in Revelation 21
that the Lord tabernacled among us. Took a tent. Temporary dwelling
place, didn't it? I stopped and thought about that.
What happened to the body that the Lord Jesus Christ took when
he came here? It didn't see corruption, like
ours, did it? What happened to it? Well, somehow
the Lord changed it. He didn't have any beauty when
he came. Just an old brown tent. And the reason being, when there's
no beauty in him that we should desire, no comeliness, just an
old brown-skinned tent. A brown-skinned tent? Does that
sound familiar? A brown-skinned tent? That's the tabernacle in
the wilderness. Huh? That was a temporary thing. That's where all of Israel had
to go to worship. That's where the Shekinah glory
of God was seen. On the inside. The Holy of Holies
on the inside. But you know, that tent is no
more. But you know, there is a temple right now in heaven
itself, not a building made with hands, but a glorious person,
a glorified son. That tent that he dwelled in,
that brown-skinned tent, one day God Almighty gloriously changed
it into his beautiful body that he now dwells in. whose face
is as the sun shining in all its strength, and feet as brass. And it says this, and we know
that if our earthly house of this tabernacle, this tent, be
dissolved, and it will be, some sooner than others, we have a
building, a new body, not made with hands, but eternal in the
heavens, And in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed
upon our house, which is from heaven itself. And it says, God
will dwell with them. Behold, the tabernacle of God
is with men, and he will dwell with them and wipe away all tear,
no more sorrow, no more pain, no more death. God with them,
us, him and his glorified body, we and our. And that's what we
look forward to. Paradise of God. Christ is that tree of life in
whose leaves are twelve manner of fruit for the healing of nations.
Well, here's a good hymn to close this message with. Hymn number
588. We're marching to Zion. The last line says, Let our songs
abound, and every tear be dry. We're marching through Emmanuel's
ground. The fairer world on high. Tent dwellers. Stand with us. We're going to sing it the old
way with the chorus, okay? 588. Come we that love the Lord.