There are few more beautiful human illustrations of God’s love for sinners than what we can see in David and Mephibosheth. Out of love for His only begotten Son, God has adopted thousands of crippled sinners and brought them into His eternal family. The Son of God died that we might live, but now not only do we have life, we have it more abundantly. Whether we realize it today or not, we sit at the table of the King and feast on His bounty. We have been born into the family of God and officially adopted as well. And this is in spite of our crutches, our disabilities and our awful sins. They are not only under the Lord’s table of blessing, they are under the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The story of David and Mephibosheth could be altered just a bit and retold about hundreds of different people. For example it could be told about David himself. There he is – the youngest child of an insignificant sheep rancher of Bethlehem. By-passing better men, God sovereignly chose the least significant son of the family and adopted him. The Lord instructed him, empowered him, elevated him, crowned him and glorified him. And it was through nothing more than the grace of God. Abraham is another of those people about whom this story could be retold.
After two messages from these verses on the faith of Abraham, you may be wondering what more might we dig out. There isn’t a lot, but what we failed to do last week was to apply Abraham’s faith to us. The promise of God has been made sure to all the seed; “not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all.” “Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed.” We would be terribly remiss, if we didn’t hold up Abraham before our eyes, like a mirror, to examine whether or not we can see ourselves in his faith, or our faith in his faith.
And that is how Abraham was somewhat like Mephiboseth. He was a child of a line of princes and kings – Noah, Shem, Arphaxad and Eber, just like Mephiboseth. But he had been crippled by sin, just like all the rest of us. He was chosen by the grace of God, sheerly out of love that resided in the Divine heart. And he was given blessings and privilege equal to that of a son of God.
The Bible describes all the sinners, whom the Lord has saved, as being heirs – inheritors of the Lord’s estate. We have been justified by grace and made heirs according to the hope of eternal life – Titus 3. James says, “Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and HEIRS OF THE KINGDOM which he hath promised to them that love him?” God’s angels – “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be HEIRS OF SALVATION?” Then there is that great scripture in Romans 8 – “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then HEIRS; HEIRS OF GOD, and JOINT-HEIRS WITH CHRIST; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.” There are people in this world who are heirs of the world through the Lord Jesus Christ. You and I may be heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.
But as the Bible clearly tells us that this inheritance has nothing to do with anyone’s work or worthiness.
Please forgive me, but I like many, but not all, of the books of John Grisham. I think that Grisham is a Christian, even though I have heard he is a member of a Southern Baptist church. Most of his stories are moral if not actually teaching moral principles, and sin is usually exposed for what it is. In one of my favorite stories, a very rich man, horribly wicked man dies and leaves his wealth to his heirs. But because that wealth is his and not theirs, he divides it up according to his desires and not theirs. To most of his spoiled, selfish, wicked children he leaves next to nothing – they deserve nothing. But there is one daughter, whom he has ignored all of her life, and who has ignored and denied him. She has become a child of God through saving grace and is a evangelical missionary in South America. She hates his dissipated, sinful, greedy life-style, although she has nothing against him personally. She is his illegitimate daughter, and legally he owes her absolutely nothing. But to this servant of God he gives billions of dollars. The beginning of the book describes how the legitimate children of this man, try their best to somehow, at the last minute earn their father’s love and money. They pretended to love him and obey him. They temporarily clean up their lives and outwardly put away some of their vices. When all they want is the family wealthy they pretend to be a part of the family. But they can’t earn their father’s inheritance. Out of absolute grace, and without any reason whatsoever, the legally least deserving child is given it all.
Whether Abraham was a moral man or not, is not pertinent to the question of his inheritance. Whether he treated Sarah, Terah or Lot with respect and kindness, is not important. He didn’t have the law of Moses, but if he did, his obedience to that law would not make him God’s friend. God chose to save that man purely out His Divine grace. To Abraham was reckoned that reward by grace, not out of debt – verse 4.
I’m not here to tell you that faith is an easy thing. I can tell you with assurance that it is a lot more simple than most people would like to make it, but it is not necessarily easy. When Abraham first left the city in which he was born, leaving all his former friends and colleagues, that may, or may not, have been easy. When he left Haran, after the burial of his father, traveling into an unknown land, that may have been easy. But when the promises began to get more specific, and his body began to get more frail, the business of faith began to get much harder.
God asks that we trust Him for things impossible, not just those which are difficult. And whether or not we think that eternity in righteous and glorious Heaven is impossible, it really is when put into the shadows of our sinfulness. The Christian is being invited into and directed toward a place for which we have no natural ability to survive. It’s not unlike an invitation to live with the Lord on one of the moons or Jupiter, or to join him at the bottom of the sea. As sinners, we are unequipped to reside for a moment in the rarified air of Heaven. We may foolishly think that we are fit for such a glorious task, but the truth is we are not and never could be without the miraculous grace of God. And yet the Lord says, “believe me and join me.”
We are told to trust Him when there isn’t any reason or hope. Abraham “who against hope believed in hope,” and that is what the Lord requires of us. But there is reason to trust the Lord, if it is the Lord has told us to do so. “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.”
Please don’t think that God was forced to be so kind because of Abraham’s faith. Abraham was made an heir of God by grace, not by faith. Abraham only understood and enjoyed that grace and inheritance through faith.
Those verses which I quoted a few minutes ago about the saints being heirs of God, are applied by the Lord only to those receive that grace through faith. Abraham is the father of us all, when we join him in the same kind of faith.
Abraham was asked to have resurrection faith, and so are we. First, we are asked to believe that the Son of God “was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” Jesus completely and thoroughly died on that cross. There was no breath in his lungs – one of which was punctured with a spear. There was no longer any beating in his heart, and His brain functions had ceased. His eyes were cold and staring; His hands and feet were cold and clammy. Christ Jesus was just as dead before they took him down from the cross, as Abel was after being buried thousands of years. And yet we are asked to believe that He was restored to life, and that He came out of his tomb. Righteousness is imputed only to those who “believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead.”
And then we are asked to believe that we shall be raised from the dead in order to enjoy that land which the Lord has promised. As much as we believe, and want to believe, that the Lord is going to return to translate us to himself without death, there have been thousands of children of faith who had to give up their hundred-year-old bodies before reaching the Promised Land. And yet death still does not negate the promise of God. Overcoming death is nothing to our Omnipotent God. This kind of faith is just another aspect of our faith.
I’m not here to tell you that faith is an easy thing. I can tell you with assurance that it is a lot more simple than most people would like to make it, but it is not necessarily easy. But that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be easy if we look at it in its simplest form. The Almighty God, the Omnipotent God, the Eternal God, the God who cannot lie, has made a promise. If the promise of God cannot be broken, then to live in the expectation of receiving that promise should be easy. The Bible, which is the revelation of God’s heart, says that Jesus Christ was “delivered for our offences and raised for our justification.” If the Bible says that when people repent of their sins and believe that Jesus was delivered for their sin, that those people will be delivered from their sins, simple logic says that it shall be so. God asks us to trust His promise – to believe Him – to believe that Jesus saves us from sin. That should be as easy as it is simple, but the sin within us makes it difficult to the point of impossible.
Praise God for his grace – complete and thorough saving grace. Praise God for the gift of saving faith.
On the other hand, when the Lord saved Abraham, there wasn’t a speck of wickedness or unrighteousness in God. There was no reason for the Lord to call Abraham, or to give promises to him, or to bless him. And there is no reason for the Lord to save or bless any one of us, here today. Therefore when God reaches down into the slime of the world, and pulls us up, cleans us off, promises us a home in Heaven and fellowship with Him throughout eternity, He is exceedingly glorified – prodigiously glorified. Abraham “staggered not at promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God.”
There is an interesting twist to that Grisham story. I have to re-twist it to make it fit with my message, but it does fit perfectly. The missionary daughter, didn’t want a penny of her father’s money, even though it would have met the needs of hundreds of missionaries for a hundred years. I won’t give the whole plot away, but I have to say that she was greatly glorified in trusting God to meet her needs rather than in trusting her father’s money. And that dumped a heavy load of guilt on all of us readers who were urging her to say “yes” to the bequest. That young lady was not only glorified by her refusal of the money, but she greatly glorified God in trusting him to take care of her. Similarly, God is glorified when we throw aside all the suggested human means to salvation and simply trust the promise and gift of God.
This is what makes Abraham such an important Bible character. There are dozens of Bible people who are worthy of hours and hours of study. Take Job for example, that great man from about the same period of time as Abraham. Is Job a child of faith and in heaven today? I have no doubt. Does he have lessons that we all need to learn? Absolutely. But can we see how he became a child of God, and how he was justified? That is only implied. In Abraham we see it clearly.
“Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” The whole point of this exercise is to show to you that obedience to the law cannot cleanse away your sin. It is to teach you that by faith Abraham pleased God and was declared righteous in God’s sight. It is to exhort you to have the same kind of faith in God that Abraham had. Unless you repent of your sin and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ you will die and spend eternity in divine judgment for your sin. But, “believe on the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved.” That is what Abraham did, and that is his great example.