Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Trinity Sermons.
This week we are continuing our sermon series, Heroes of Faith.
And when we're talking about hockey, Wayne Gretzky is often called the Great One.
But when we're talking about faith, the Great One is Abraham.
And Abraham's faith carried him through some turbulent times, including three big tests
from God.
So today, Rob is going to help us unpack those tests and show us what Abraham's faith has
to teach us today.
Our first reading this morning is from the book of Genesis, chapter 12, verses one to
three.
The Lord has said to Abraham, go from your country, your people, and your father's household
to the land I will show you.
I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you.
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse.
And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.
Our second reading is from Hebrews, chapter 11, verses eight through 12, and 17 to 19.
By faith, Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance,
obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.
By faith, he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country.
He lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.
For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is
God.
And by faith, even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was unable to bear children because she
considered him faithful who had made the promise.
And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the
stars in the sky, and as countless as the sand on the seashore.
By faith, Abraham, when tested by God, offered Isaac as a sacrifice.
He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son.
Even though God had said to him, it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.
For the same reason that God could even raise the dead.
And so in a manner of speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.
The word of the Lord.
If you've been to the Hockey Hall of Fame, you know that there are something like 300
inductees that are in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
They've been putting people in there for like 80 years, and you can walk around from room
to room, from display to display to see all these amazing hockey players.
But there is one display.
There is one inductee in particular, which is greater and I will say even more important
than all the others.
There is one hockey player who stands above them all, and that of course is Wayne Gretzky.
Wayne Gretzky is known as the great one, the great one.
And surely he's the greatest one probably to put on skates and play the game.
He has the record right now for points, for assists, for goals.
Although Alexander Ovechkin apparently is just 10 or 20 goals behind him and could likely
will catch him on the goal thing.
But he's surpassed all other hockey players with his vision, his hockey IQ, the legacy
that he has left.
He won four Stanley Cups with the Edmonton Oilers.
And he inspired so many generations that followed him to play the game.
So that's the great one, Wayne Gretzky.
Well for the past five weeks we have been looking at a different Hall of Fame.
It's not a Hall of Fame that honors pro athletes.
It's a Hall of Fame that honors those who live by faith.
And it's not located in any city, this Hall of Fame, this Hall of Faith.
It's actually located in your Bibles.
It's located in the Book of Hebrews and in Chapter 11.
And if you look there you will see a whole host of inductees into the Hall of Faith.
So for example a few weeks ago we walked into one room in the Hall of Faith and there was
Abel.
Abel is this guy who worshiped God perhaps for the very first time and offered an appropriate
sacrifice to God and thereby earned himself a statue in the Hall of Faith.
And then you walk into another room and we did and we saw this other fellow.
His name was Enoch.
And Enoch is in the Hall of Faith because he walked with God throughout his life and
actually walked with God so closely that he walked right around death itself right into
the presence of God.
Enoch in the Hall of Faith.
And then last week we walked into this big immersive room filled with raindrops and clouds
and it was a special room that was recognizing the hero of faith, Noah.
Noah who listened carefully to God and stood up for God in a world that was going the other
way and that earned Noah a place in the Hall of Faith.
And in the weeks ahead, next week we're going to visit this room over here where Sarah is
located and this next week or the week after that we're going to visit Rahab's memorial
in the Hall of Faith and we're going to keep on going.
But today, today we enter into the biggest room in the whole Hall of Faith.
Today we are going to see a display that is completely devoted to the Great One.
And I'm not talking about Wayne Gretzky.
I'm talking about Abraham.
Abraham is the Great One in the Hall of Faith.
And today we're going to find out why.
We're going to find out by reading his little excerpt there in Hebrews chapter 11.
But really Abraham's story is so big it begins in Genesis chapter 12 and goes on for like
10 or 20 chapters after that.
Why, you might say, is Abraham of all the people considered the Great One?
Well first of all, Abraham is widely viewed as the father of faith.
There are three major world religions that all claim Abraham as their father of faith.
Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.
They all see themselves as children of Abraham.
Even our own children in kids church will sing the song.
Father Abraham had many sons, had many sons, had father Abraham.
How's it go?
I am one of them and so are, so let's just praise the Lord.
So that, we are one of them.
Father Abraham, he's our father of faith too.
He's mentioned 300 times throughout the Bible.
14 whole chapters in Genesis.
74 mentions in the New Testament.
And in the hall of faith in Hebrews 11, he's got the most space given to him than anybody
else in that chapter.
Paul calls Abraham the father of all who believe.
It's interesting as a preacher, some of these people in the hall of faith, there's so little
written about them in the Bible that the hard work is to kind of build a 20 or 25 minute
sermon out of such little material.
The problem with Abraham is exactly the opposite.
There's so much on him, how do you distill it down to a 20 or 25 minute sermon?
The answer is you preach a 45 minute sermon.
Which is no, just joking.
We're not going to do that today.
But anyways, that was the first thing.
That's why he is the great one.
But another reason why he's considered the great one is that he had a title that was
given to nobody else in the whole Bible.
And that was Abraham was called a friend of God.
For example, three times in the Bible, but here's one from James, Abraham believed God
and he was called God's friend.
And you know, to this day, Arabs and Muslims will refer to Abraham as Abraham Khalil Allah,
which means Abraham, the friend of God.
He's the great one.
He was the friend of God.
And the third reason Abraham is considered the great one in the hall of faith is because
his faith was tested and proven more than anyone else's.
He was tested again and again and again by God and he always passed the test.
He was tried and true.
Did you know that testing your faith is an essential part of spiritual growth?
Think of it this way.
Let's say you are baking a cake and you mix up the recipe just perfectly.
You turn the oven to 350 degrees.
You slide the cake in the oven.
You set the dinger.
You set the beeper, the timer for the right amount of time and then you wait and you wait
and it goes beep and it lets you know it's done and that means what?
You can take the cake out and it's done perfectly.
Not necessarily though.
Not necessarily.
What do you have to do?
You got to take the fork and you got to do the fork test and you stick the fork into
the cake and you pull it out and if it comes out goopy, it's not done.
Even if you put it in for the right time at the right temperature, it could still come
out goopy.
What you got to do is wait until it comes out clean.
I don't mind if it's a little bit goopy.
I think that tastes pretty good still.
But the point is something can look done on the outside and not be done on the inside
and the same is true for people of faith.
You might meet people who look like their faith is fully formed and they're fully baked
in the best sense of the word and yet actually on the inside they're not done.
So what God does is God has to stick a fork in you from time to time.
He has to test us.
God tested Abraham in this way.
And by the way, it's very different for me to say that God tests people than to say that
God tempts people.
Those are very different words.
Satan in the Bible is the one who does the tempting.
God in the Bible is the one who does the testing.
A guy I read this week, Skip Hetzig says, tempting brings out the worst in us.
Testing brings out the best in us.
Now in Hebrews 11, we're going to look at this, but they summarize Abraham's life around
three tests of faith.
And we're going to look at each one of those.
We did provide you with sermon notes so we can follow along and get the most out of this.
Let's look at the three big tests that Abraham faced.
The first is what you might call the test of leaving.
Many think that faith is really, really put to the test when you have to step into some
new challenge or new opportunity that's in front of you.
And that's true.
But it is also a huge test to just leave behind something that is familiar and something that
is very comfortable, trusting that there's something greater ahead.
And that is what Abraham learned in his first test.
It was the test of leaving.
We read that by faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out.
He had to leave the place where he would receive as an inheritance.
And he went out, and get this, not knowing where he was going.
Isn't that amazing?
He left without knowing where he was going.
This leaving, this test of leaving shows us three things.
The first is that Abraham had to break from his past.
Abraham lived in this city at the time.
It was a city called Ur.
It was in present-day Iraq.
And archaeologists have actually discovered that the city of Ur was a major city.
200 or 300,000 people lived there.
There was lots of culture.
There was a library.
There was a museum.
There was astronomers did stuff there.
There was even maybe some form of a university there.
It was a great city.
It wasn't a little hick town.
But God says, Abraham, I want you to leave that place.
I want you to break from that place.
In fact, God's first words to Abraham are not, hey, Abraham, how are you doing?
My name's God.
Oh, hi, God.
No.
His first words are go.
Abraham, go from your country.
Go from your people.
And go from your father's household.
Do you see how important those three things are to most people?
Those are the things that form you, your country, your household, your people.
And Abraham's being asked to leave all that behind, to have a complete break from all
of that.
It's a huge ask.
In some ways, this is still what followers of Jesus are asked to do today.
We are asked to go and leave behind old ways of thinking and leave behind old patterns
of behavior and leave behind anything that is holding us back from fully trusting Jesus.
We cannot really step into the future that God has for us if we are still clinging to
these things from the past.
But faith says, I believe that whatever it is God is calling me to is way better than
anything that I am leaving behind.
Right?
So that is the first part about leaving, is he had to just break from his past.
But secondly, he had to follow God step by step.
When I go on a trip, I want to know the full itinerary.
I want to know where we're going, when we're getting there, every turn, every twist, every
stop along the way.
But God did not reveal any of that to Abraham whatsoever, as I already showed you.
It just said, go to the land that I will show you.
I will show you.
Faith, Abraham teaches us, involves stepping out even if you don't know the destination.
When we moved from Toronto to take this job at Trinity, we had to, of course, call the
moving van and get everything packed up and loaded up and come on over here.
And you know what?
We knew where we were going and we did have a sense where God was calling us and we were
ready to get there.
But imagine, for example, if the moment that we've got everything loaded into the vehicle,
we were ready to pull out of Toronto and the driver rolls down his window and says, okay,
boss, where are we going to?
And I said, actually, I don't know.
He'd be like, okay, very funny.
You know, I'm moving all your stuff.
Are you saying you do not have a destination?
And I would say, well, actually, that's true.
We don't quite know where we're going.
Well, then he'd be like, well, how am if you don't know where you're going, how are we
going to know when we get there?
And if I just said, you know what, I hear your point.
I actually don't know exactly, but I believe that God will tell me when we get there.
Abraham was not given a roadmap.
He was not given a five year plan.
He was just called to take this first step, one step and trust that God then would lead
him on the next step and the next step and the next step.
Some of us, we really hesitate, I think, to follow God because we don't know exactly where
God is leading us.
But do we know enough to take the first step?
Because even taking the first step toward God is better than just saying stuck in the
mess that we're in.
And it's certainly better than taking a step in the other direction.
Taking a step toward God's best, even one step is always the right step.
And God is calling each of us to take that step.
The question is, are we willing to go?
Even if we don't know exactly where we're going to end up.
The third thing about Abraham's leaving was that he was going to always be on the move.
Him leaving wasn't a one time deal.
He would be on the go for the rest of his life.
Can you imagine leaving for a place and never, ever, ever feeling like you arrive?
Abraham lived as a nomad his whole life.
Yes, God promised him this land.
And yes, he did live in that land for a while.
He even died in that land.
But he never owned a piece of that land himself.
Never.
Actually, not true.
He did own one piece.
He bought a cave in the promised land to bury his wife when she died.
But that was it.
That was it.
We read that by faith, he made his home in the promised land like a stranger.
In a foreign country, he lived in tents.
You know, there are groups of people today in our world who are nomads, like the Bedouins.
The Bedouin people, they go from place to place with their flocks and with their cattle
and their sheep, just looking for grazing land, just looking for water.
They're not on the run.
They're not refugees.
They're not being chased by anyone.
It's just part of their lifestyle.
They travel all over Jordan and Egypt and the Middle East and Saudi Arabia.
And that's just their identity.
Their identity is tied to movement, and their homes are not in any one fixed place.
Abraham lived as a stranger and as a nomad.
And here's why.
Because he felt like what he had left behind was actually not a home.
It was a great and prosperous city, but it didn't feel like home.
He was looking for another home, what he calls a city with foundations, whose architect and
builder was God.
I don't know if you've ever felt this way.
Do you ever feel like you're a bit of a nomad?
There's a lot of what I would call spiritual nomads in our world today.
They're just going from one belief system to another belief system, to another way of
life, to another way of thinking.
They don't really know what they're looking for.
They're just bouncing around from one thing to the next.
And many of us, we also spend our lives as nomads in the sense that we're looking for
something solid.
We're looking for that great city, whether that's money or a reputation or a career.
But careers fade.
And reputations can fade and relationships can disappoint and security can vanish overnight.
You may live in a house.
You may have lived there 10 years, 20 years, even 60 years, but that's still only temporary.
The only piece of land you're ever going to permanently own will be a six-foot hole in
the ground at some point.
We have to also, like Abraham, embrace movement as a way of life, trusting that this earth
is not entirely our home.
Our home is really with God.
And we therefore, we kind of have to embrace this idea of living as nomads, not settling
for just something temporary comforts of this world, but longing and always moving toward
this eternal city, this kingdom of God that God has prepared for us.
So that was Abraham's very first test.
It was the test of leaving.
He had to break from his past.
He had to follow God one step at a time.
And he ended up always being on the move in his life.
Now, could you pass that test?
I don't know if I could, but Abraham did.
There was a second test related to that, and that was Abraham's test of waiting.
Now, I don't like waiting.
You don't like waiting.
None of us like waiting.
We like to order something and have it arrive the next day.
We don't like to cook full meals.
We'd rather microwave them.
We find it bothersome if it takes more than a few seconds for a web page to load, right?
But waiting is one of the tests that God gave Abraham, and it's also one of the tests that
I'm sure you know he's given us from time to time.
It's a test to see what we would do, what Abraham would do when it seems like nothing
is happening.
And we see this waiting in Abraham's life in two ways.
First of all, Abraham had to live by a promise.
A promise.
Abraham left his home.
He didn't leave his home because he had personal ambition or he had a dream he was following.
He left his home.
Why?
Because God made him a promise.
It's a promise about that one day he would have this great big family.
God promised.
He said, hey, Abraham, I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you and I
will make your name great and you will be a blessing.
Abraham, again, didn't have all the details.
He didn't know how this was going to happen, but he believed it.
He believed it.
God said, go and I will do this, he trusted the promise, but that promise, of course,
meant a lot of waiting because how many children did Abraham have when God made this promise?
Zero.
His wife, Sarah, was barren.
He was old.
Clearly this promise was going to take a lot of time.
And yet, thousands of years later, when the author of Hebrews tells the story of what
happened, he says it happened.
It's from this one man, and he is good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the
stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.
Quick trivia, which is more numerous, the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore?
Anyone know?
Yeah, I looked it up.
There are approximately 7.5 quintillion grains of sand on earth, but the number of stars
is estimated to be in the sextillions or the septillions, which means there's something
like 10,000 more stars in the universe that we know of than grains of sand on the whole
earth.
Isn't that amazing?
That's crazy.
But anyways, if God can take one man's faith and multiply it like that over time, just
imagine what God can do if you trust in his promise, if you trust him over time, over
your life.
Abraham lived by this promise, and that also meant Abraham had to live with patience because
the promises God makes us are not fulfilled according to our timelines.
When Abraham got this promise from God, he was 75 years old, according to Genesis.
The first child of this promise, Isaac, was not born to him until 25 years later, when
the Bible says he was 100 years old.
He waited 25 years just to see the first shred of evidence that this nation that God promised
was actually going to happen.
And he had to walk.
He had to walk by faith, not by sight for 25 years.
I sometimes think I must have been so embarrassing for Abraham because do you guys, Abraham's
name, you know what it means?
Abraham means father of a multitude.
So imagine, you know, meeting someone, hey, how are you?
Nice to meet you.
What's your name?
Well, my name is Brian.
What's your name?
Abraham.
Oh, father of a multitude.
Great.
How many kids do you have?
Well, so far, zero.
So far zero.
But I have a promise and I'm waiting patiently.
I have faith.
So far zero, though.
That's what faith is.
Faith is believing when things are not happening when you want or how you want.
It's somehow holding on to God's promise, even when it seems nothing is happening.
And I know you've experienced this.
I'll just take a moment right now and ask yourself, what are you waiting for?
Is there some prayer that you've been praying for years and it just seems to go unanswered?
Some promise you feel God made to you and it has just been delayed and delayed and delayed.
You may be in a situation and you just do not see a way forward.
Faith means trusting that God is still working even when you can't see it.
Like Abraham, will you choose to trust God even in this time of waiting for you?
But God saves the biggest test for last for Abraham.
Oh, Abraham passed the test of leaving.
He passed the test of waiting, but would he pass the test of offering?
You're going to have to go over this one pretty quickly.
But you see, eventually, 25 years later, Abraham and his wife Sarah, they had their first child.
Yay, it's Isaac.
And then comes the biggest test.
Oh, God tested Abraham.
See, the Bible doesn't even hide it.
God tested Abraham and God said, take your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac, and
go to the region of Moriah and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain that
I will show you.
Gosh, of course, this sounds completely outrageous.
I have a hard time with this story.
Many people have a hard time with this story.
But can you imagine?
Can you imagine the anguish in Abraham right now?
Not only was Isaac his son, his beloved son, but Isaac was the promise, right?
Isaac was the hope.
He was supposed to be the golden child, the one that was going to bring about this great
future.
What an incredible test for Abraham and what a dilemma it creates for him.
There's an ethical and spiritual dilemma for Abraham because on the one hand, you had God's
promise, Abraham, through this child, I'm going to make you a great nation, stars and
sand on the beach, right?
It's going to be huge.
That's the promise.
But on the other hand, you've got this command.
The command is go and sacrifice this child and give him an offer, this child up to me,
right?
It's the craziest dilemma.
Abraham had to decide, well, what am I going to do here?
Am I going to trust the promise or trust the command?
Is God erratic?
Is that's what's going on?
Many people think this looks totally erratic or could he actually somehow sacrifice Isaac
and the promise would still come true?
I struggle with this, but you know what?
The book of Hebrews actually puts a spin on it that I had never, never thought about.
This has been really helpful for me this week.
It says that Abraham reasoned.
Now, this is from this is the Greek word logismai, which was where we get our word for logic.
In other words, faced with this dilemma, Abraham really logic the heck out of this.
He really thought about it and really reason and really tried to think it through.
He said, okay, okay, okay, God has given me this promise.
Okay.
But God has also commanded me to do this impossible thing.
Therefore, how do I reason these two together?
How can God's promise on the one hand be trustworthy and God's command also be something I can
do?
And therefore, according to his logic, according to his reason, Abraham reasoned that God was
able to raise the dead.
Isn't that fascinating?
I never realized that that the only conclusion he could come to was that if I offer up Isaac,
God will raise him from the dead.
That's the only way to reconcile these two things.
And early Christians, the author of Hebrews deduced that Abraham did this because he believed
in the power of resurrection.
We believe in the power of resurrection because we, of course, have seen Jesus and the empty
tomb, but Abraham believed it way beforehand.
He believed it by faith.
He believed it by logic.
Right.
And actually, if you read the story again, you can kind of see that maybe this is what
he was thinking.
Right.
Abraham, when he went off to sacrifice Isaac, he told disturbance.
He said, listen, stay here with the donkeys.
I'm going to go over there with the boy and we're going to worship and then we will come
back to you.
It's like Abraham knew that I don't know what's going to happen, but even if he dies, he's
going to be raised from the dead.
Anyways, and then because he obeyed and offered up that which was most precious to him, God
provided a substitute.
The last minute, man, Abraham, the great one passes the third and final test of faith,
the test of offering.
Let me just close by zeroing in on one phrase.
One phrase from that piece of scripture.
It says that Abraham reasoned that God was able to raise the dead.
God was able to solve the problem.
God was able to make the way.
And I want to challenge you this morning to come to the same conclusion that Abraham did.
Whatever you're dealing with, God is able.
Whatever you're afraid of, God is able.
Whatever feels impossible, God is able.
Whatever burden you are carrying, God is able.
Whatever taxes and tariffs may be levied against us, God is able.
Whatever you're waiting for, God is able.
He was able for Abraham.
He was able for you.
Abraham did not know how God was going to come through, but he knew that God would come
through.
Will you trust that God is able even when you don't see how?
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of Trinity Sermons.
This sermon was recorded at Trinity Church, Streetsville on February 2nd, 2025.