In Genesis 12:1-4, Moses writes, “Now the Lord said to Abram [notice that the words of God are in view here], ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ So [on the basis of the words of God] Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran” (emphasis mine).
Notice, first of all, that the word of God spoken to Abraham is what caused him to leave everything familiar and go to a country he did not know. Indeed, Abraham didn’t even know the general location of that country. He didn’t even know what peoples lived there. He didn’t even know the general climate of the region. He didn’t know what natural resources were there. He knew nothing about that country. But he did know this: God had spoken and instructed him to pack up all of his possessions and gather everyone who was under his authority and walk with them for what ended up to be seven-hundred-fifty miles. Again, Abraham was willing to do this not because he had some flight of fantasy or because he was moved by some powerful emotion but simply because God had spoken very specific words to him and he believed those words. He believed the Lord. This is so important, Friends, because it teaches us that faith doesn’t spring out of nowhere but that faith emerges as we trust in the specific speech of God. Faith looks to God and clings to his words; this is how it operates.
Now, when we think carefully about Genesis 12:1-4 we see that the Lord gave Abraham one command and several promises. The command is in verse 1 and it’s very simple: “Go!” Leave this place and go to some other place that I’ll identify later. The promises are found every time you read the words “I will,” and in the interest of time I won’t reiterate them for you. But please notice these promises because they become the content of faith for Abraham and his family after him for generations to come, in fact, down to our own day. God spoke, Abraham believed in the person and words of God, and by grace he lived his life accordingly. This is how faith operates.
Turning our attention back to Hebrews 11, we see in verse 9 that in faith and obedience Abraham went out and took many with him. “By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise” (Hebrews 11:9). In other words, Abraham trusted in the words of God and lived his life accordingly. Once he arrived in the land of Canaan and the Lord told him to settle down there, he was so convinced by the truthfulness of the words of God that he was willing to live in tents from the age of seventy-five until the day of his death. Please let that sink in: we live in apartments and houses and relative luxury. Abraham and his family lived in tents for many decades because they believed the specific words of God spoken to him.
Indeed, as the Bible says, Abraham essentially lived as a wanderer and resident-alien all the days of his life. He never had earthly roots in an earthly place like so many of us desire, and this was specifically because he believed in the promises of God and he “was looking forward [into the future, not to the present] for a city whose designer and builder was God” (11:10). The author doesn’t tell us what he means by this just yet, but he will soon enough.
For now, this is his point: Abraham heard, believed, and obeyed the words of God. This is what it means to live by faith and I pray that we’ll have ears to hear. I pray that we’ll seek God by his Word, listen and believe, and then follow in his ways by his power and grace. This is how faith operates.
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