Going On Faith

Texts: Genesis 12:1-9, Hebrews 11:1-2

Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, Utah

January 5, 2025

A few years ago as I was doing some study and reading in the Bible I began to notice how often Abraham was mentioned. Abraham was showing up all over the place: in the Psalms, in Isaiah, in Paul’s letters. The events of his life are in Genesis 12-25, but he shows up in 26 other books of the Bible, and in some of those he is named multiple times.

In Exodus the Lord comes to Moses and says, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham…” What kind of guy is this who even God uses to identify himself? And God is called the “God of Abraham” several times in the Bible.

What kind of guy is this that Jesus referred to him saying that “Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day, he saw it and was glad?” That’s a loaded statement. Last time I looked, Abraham lived in the front of the Bible, and Jesus was toward the latter third. Abraham saw Jesus’ day?

What kind of guy is this that Paul, the main writer of the New Testament, says, “And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham.” Furthermore Paul says that God’s promise to Abraham belongs to those who belong to Christ.

I began to realize I needed to pay attention to Abraham. He is a huge figure in the story of what God has done and is doing in the world.

Abraham is considered the father of Israel. Moses was the one who led Israel out of Egypt. David was the greatest king. But it is from Abraham that the nation gets its birth and grows.

Abraham is also a unique figure in that the three great monotheistic religions of the world all claim him. Abraham is vital for Jews, Muslims and Christians.

Abraham just shows up unannounced at the end of Genesis 11. At that point he is Abram. He will become Abraham in the course of the story. To stay consistent with the Bible I will refer to him as Abram until we get to the place where God changes his name to Abraham. And the change of his name is significant. But for now he is Abram.

Unlike Moses, Samuel, Jesus, and some others, we know nothing about Abram’s birth or background. There is no build up to Abram.

We are told he is married to Sarai. Then we get this: “Now Sarai was barren; she had no children.” (Genesis 11:30). The story of Abram comes out of barrenness and nothingness.

We soon learn that Abram is 75 years old. Nothing significant happens for him until he is 75. So if you are getting on in years and life has seemed a little slow, wait, the best and most exciting may yet come.

Abram and Sarai are a childless old couple so why pay attention to them? Well, it is through this childless old couple that the Lord promises to bless all peoples of the earth. Out of barrenness God is going to do something big.

Abram was from a place called Ur. Ur was a city in a region in Mesopotamia known as Sumer. It is now part of Iraq. There are all kinds of wild and sensationalist biblical interpretations that have been made by certain people about Iraq in recent years. That isn’t to say Iraq isn’t a significant place, but the Middle East is full of significant places.

Well, Abram was from Iraq, and he has something to say to us that doesn’t have to do with multi-headed beasts, the end times, or wars. He has something to say to us about faith. Abram also has something to say to us about God.

Really, Abram’s life is not so we can be like Abram. We are never told to live by Abram’s example. In fact, there are times he is exactly what we don’t want to be.

The main message in Abram’s life is to reveal God. It is to show who God is. It is to show how God is able to overcome obstacles and seemingly chaotic situations so that his promises and purposes are fulfilled.

God promises that Abram will be the father of many nations, and many, many people will come from him. It’s hard to receive this when you don’t even have one child yourself and you are beyond child-making years. But God makes this covenant with Abram. Abram will have children. Abram will be given a great, wide, and wonderful land.

Time and time again in Abram’s life this covenant is threatened. But God overrules the threats. What we learn from Abram’s experience is the faithfulness of God.

The first word the Lord speaks to Abram is “leave”. Some translations read “go”. Abram is asked to leave his country, his people and his father’s house. Understand that leaving in Abraham’s time was way more radical and risky than in ours. No one traveled very far in those days. There was no mass transportation. No gas stations. No maps. No hotels. No Airbnbs or convenience plazas along the way.

You didn’t live alone in your own house or condo. Everything was communal. You lived in tent houses with others. Everything was done with others. You relied on them for food, conversation, information, getting things done. You ate together, sat around the fire at night together, herded animals together.

The family was the refuge. The family was the safety net. You lived under the father’s authority. You didn’t leave him. That is one of the reasons the leaving of the prodigal son is such a poignant part of Jesus’ parable.

So, to leave country, people, and father’s house would be hugely uncomfortable and would not necessarily make much sense. It was an enormous step.

Leaving also had religious connotations. Abram lived in a world which believed in many gods and deities. In Abram’s world, various deities were associated with certain lands or people groups. Nations, tribes and families each had their own gods. So when Abram is asked to leave his land and family, he is being asked to walk away from any gods that belong to the territory and family he is from.

Abram is being asked to leave those gods and follow the one true God. And along the way discover who God is. What he knew previously about religion, faith and spiritual things are being left. The Lord is going to reveal himself to Abram as he leaves, trusts, and discovers who the Lord is.

That’s the way it works. We step out in faith, we trust, and we learn who God is and what he is like. We aren’t going to know God by just reading about him. We aren’t going to know God by listening to other people’s experiences. We have to step out in faith and trust and discover who the Lord is on our own.

We learn that God is a providing God when we have been in need and provision comes. We learn that God is a God of comfort when we experience grief and sadness and he brings comfort. We know that God can be our strength when we have come to the end of our rope, call out to God, and he brings strength.

The God of the Bible reveals himself in history, and in life. God is to be experienced. Abram will come to experience and know this God.

The first step is to leave. And Abram leaves. He goes. If to leave is an act of obedience, then to leave not knowing where you are going is an act of faith.

All the Lord tells Abram is that he will show him where to go. He doesn’t give all the details. It is “just go and trust me. I will do the guiding and blessing.”

Hebrews 11 tells us that faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. I like the translation “the conviction of things not seen” better because faith isn’t always certain. Conviction, on the other hand, is when we might have good reason to believe in something but we cannot always measure or grasp it with complete certainty.

We live by convictions all the time. That this marriage will work out, that this person will be faithful, that this candidate will serve the best interests of our nation or community, that this job will provide fulfillment, that this move will bring the stability our family needs, that this school is the right one for me. But we can’t always prove our convictions until we live by them.

Abram was convicted that to go was the thing to do. The leaving came with a promise. The promise was that the Lord would make Abram into a great nation, that the Lord would bless him, make his name great, bless those who bless him and curse those who curse him, and would bless all the peoples on earth through him.

The Lord makes five first-person statements. The Lord is the mover. He is the one who will do this for Abram, and really, all peoples on the earth. It rests on God’s faithfulness and ability. This is sometimes called the Abrahamic blessing. It is still being played out and fulfilled today. God is making a people who are related to him by faith, through which he will bless all families of the earth. When we walk by faith, we get in on the blessing of Abraham.

Eugene Peterson said, “Faith has to do with marrying Invisible and Visible. When we engage in an act of faith we give up control, we give up sensory (sight, hearing, etc.) confirmation of reality; we give up insisting on head-knowledge as our primary means of orientation in life.”

“The positive way to say this is that when we engage in an act of faith we choose to deal with a living God whom we trust to know what he is doing.”

When we journey by faith we live with mystery. We are not in charge. God is. We have to trust he knows what he is doing, whether he shows us or not. That’s what makes living by faith so challenging, and sometimes frustrating. We aren’t in charge. And for us control freaks, that’s hard!

Go, Abram. Leave everything you know and that is familiar. I will show you where to go. I will make the way for you. But you need to follow and trust me. Will you?

Leaving and following God is the first step of being a disciple of Jesus. That is what made the disciples, disciples. They left something and followed the Lord. Jesus invites people to be his disciples, to follow him.

When he called his first disciples, he asked them to leave their fishing nets, their tax collection tables, and families, and follow him. And what a ride it was.

Being a disciple means we are on a journey, that we are following God, not having seen all that awaits us, or the end. That’s why we call it a faith journey. I mean, you don’t know where this is going to end. We don’t know the places we will end up, the relationships we will be brought into, or what blessings or challenges will come.

God may ask us to “leave”, take a step of faith, in different ways. It can be a geographical leaving - leaving a place that is familiar to us because he wants us somewhere else. Those of us who have moved to a new area because we believed this is where God was leading us know about this, and the wariness we can feel.

I have done this myself several times. First, I left California for the east coast when I went to theological seminary. By the way, the Lord took me to the school I liked the least and had the most negativity about. That’s another story.

Then I left because the Lord led me to inner city Philadelphia. Then, along with Nancy, left for rural Idaho. Talk about contrasts. Then we answered a call to come Salt Lake City. And then this association with American Fork. Have mercy. Sometimes God asks us to step out in faith to a new place.

Your step of faith might mean leaving a job and the promise of financial security for something else God is calling you to. It might mean leaving a comfortable place for an uncomfortable place. It might mean ending a relationship or perhaps entering one. God might call you to leave certain ideas or values you have clung to. God wants you to take a step and let him lead you to where he will show you.

But in order to be on the journey of faith we have to take a step. We have to get up, leave, move out, follow. The journey requires action and living.

Maybe the step you need to take is to begin a journey with the Lord. Have you left yourself and come to him? It will mean times of joy and incredible blessing. But it will also be filled with frustration because you won’t always understand and God won’t always explain. At times there might be pain because there is conflict and sometimes it isn’t resolved. It will be filled with struggle because at times walking by faith will seem like such an uphill battle and you will get weak. At times it will be full of peace and fulfillment because you are following the One you were made for and you know you are on the right path.

If you are saying, “I have never done that in my life” I am going to invite you to take a step of faith today and say, “I leaving with God. I am going to become a disciple of the Lord Jesus. I don’t know where it’s going to end, but I trust him to lead me.”

Understand that Christ will be the leader. Followers don’t go in front. We have to give up control. It wasn’t all smooth and certain for Abram. But the Lord was with him. That is what it means to be a Christian.

In v. 8 we read that Abram built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. Abram set up a spot to worship the Lord and then prayed to the Lord. Abram does this twice in our text this morning. He will do this several other times. An altar is always a place of meeting God.

May his room, this table, be a kind of altar for you where you call on the name of the Lord and follow him in faith. Maybe you have been in churches all your life. Maybe this is your first Sunday you have darkened the door of a church building. Maybe you have started following and stopped and need to start again. It doesn’t matter.

We are going toward the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, led by the Holy Spirit. And who knows where it will lead. Who knows what God will do with us? Abram “obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” As we go by faith God will show us.

With that let us prepare to come to the table of our Lord.