AN EXAMPLE OF FAITH
by Alexander Maclaren
'Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out
of thy
country, and from thy kindred, and from thy
father's
house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I
will
make of thee a great nation, and I will bless
thee, and
make thy name great; and thou shalt be a
blessing: And
I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him
that
curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of
the earth
be blessed. So Abram departed, as the Lord had
spoken
unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was
seventy
and five years old when he departed out of Haran.
And
Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's
son,
and all their substance that they had gathered,
and the
souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they
went forth
to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land
of
Canaan they came. And Abram passed through the
land unto
the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh.
And the
Canaanite was then in the land. And the Lord
appeared
unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give
this
land: and there builded he an altar unto the
Lord, who
appeared unto him. And he removed from thence
unto a
mountain on the east of Beth-el, and pitched his
tent,
having Beth-el on the west, and Hai on the east:
and
there he builded an altar unto the Lord, and
called upon
the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed, going
on
still toward the south.'
-- GENESIS xii. 1-9.
We stand here at the well-head of a great river--a
narrow channel,
across which a child can step, but which is to open
out a broad
bosom that will reflect the sky and refresh
continents. The call of
Abram is the most important event in the Old
Testament, but it is
also an eminent example of individual faith. For
both reasons he is
called 'the Father of the Faithful.' We look at the
incident here
mainly from the latter point of view. It falls into
three parts.
1. The divine voice of command and promise.--God's
servants have to
be separated from home and kindred, and all
surroundings. The
command to Abram was no mere arbitrary test of
obedience. God could
not have done what He meant with him, unless He had
got him by
himself. So Isaiah (li. 2) put his finger on the
essential when he
says, 'I called him alone.' God's communications are
made to
solitary souls, and His voice to us always summons
us to forsake
friends and companions, and to go apart with God. No
man gets speech
of God in a crowd. If you desired to fill a person
with electricity,
you used to put him on a stool with glass legs, to
keep him from
earthly contact. If the quickening impulse from the
great magnet is
to charge the soul, that soul must be isolated. 'He
that loveth
father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.'
The vagueness of the command is significant. Abram
did not know
'whither he went.' He is not told that Canaan is the
land, till he
has reached Canaan. A true obedience is content to
have orders
enough for present duty. Ships are sometimes sent
out with sealed
instructions, to be opened when they reach latitude
and longitude
so-and-so. That is how we are all sent out. Our
knowledge goes no
farther ahead than is needful to guide our next
step. If we 'go out'
as He bids us, He will show us what to do next.
'I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.'
Observe the promise. We may notice that it needed a
soul raised
above the merely temporal to care much for such
promises. They would
have been but thin diet for earthly appetites. 'A
great nation'; a
divine blessing; to be a source of blessing to the
whole world, and
a touchstone by their conduct to which men would be
blessed or
cursed;--what was there in these to fascinate a man,
unless he had
faith to teach him the relative importance of the
earthly and the
heavenly, the present and the future? Notice that
the whole promise
appeals to unselfish desires. It is always, in some
measure,
elevating to live for a future, rather than a
present, good; but if
it be only the same kind of good as the present
would yield, it is a
poor affair. The only really ennobling faith is one
which sets
before itself a future full of divine blessing, and
of diffusion of
that blessing through us, and which therefore scorns
delights, and
for such gifts is content to be solitary and a
wanderer.
2. The obedience of faith.--We have here a wonderful
example of
prompt, unquestioning obedience to a bare word. We
do not know how
the divine command was conveyed to Abram. We simply
read, 'The Lord
said'; and if we contrast this with verse 7, 'The
Lord appeared ...
and said,' it will seem probable that there was no
outward sign of
the divine will. The patriarch knew that he was
following a divine
command, and not his own purpose; but there seems to
have been no
appeal to sense to authenticate the inward voice. He
stands, then,
on a high level, setting the example of faith as
unconditional
acceptance of, and obedience to, God's bare word.
Observe that faith, which is the reliance on a
person, and therefore
trust in his word, passes into both forms of
confidence in that word
as promise, and obedience to that word as command.
We cannot cut
faith in halves, and exercise the one aspect without
the other. Some
people's faith says that it delights in God's
promises, but it does
not delight in His commandments. That is no faith at
all. Whoever
takes God at His word, will take all His words.
There is no faith
without obedience; there is no obedience without
faith.
We have already said enough about the separation
which was effected
by Abram's journey; but we may just notice that the
departure from
his father's house was but the necessary result of
the gulf between
them and him, which had been opened by his faith.
They were
idolaters; he worshipped one God. That drove them
farther apart than
the distance between Sichem and Haran. When sympathy
in religion was
at an end, the breach of all other ties was best. So
to-day, whether
there be outward separation or no, depends on
circumstances; but
every true Christian is parted from the dearest who
is not a
Christian, by an abyss wider than any outward
distance can make. The
law for us is Abram's law, 'Get thee out.' Either
our faith will
separate us from the world, or the world will
separate us from our
faith and our God.
The companionship of Lot, who attaches himself to
Abram, teaches
that religion, in its true possessors, exercises an
attractive
influence over even common natures, and may win them
to a loftier
life. Some weak eyes may discern more glory in the
sunshine tinting
a poor bit of mist into ruddy light than in the beam
which is too
bright to look at. A faithful Abram will draw Lot
after him.
'They went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and
into the land of
Canaan they came.' Compare this singular expression
with chapter xi.
31, where we have Terah's emigration from Ur
described in the same
terms, with the all-important difference in the end,
'They came' not
into Canaan, but 'unto Haran, and dwelt there.' Many
begin the
course; one finishes it. Terah's journeying was only
in search of
pasture and an abode. So he dropped his wider scheme
when the
narrower served his purpose. It was an easy matter
to go from Ur to
Haran. Both were on the same bank of the Euphrates.
But to cross the
broad, deep, rapid river was a different thing, and
meant an
irrevocable cutting loose from the past life. Only
the man of faith
did that. There are plenty of half-and-half
Christians, who go along
merrily from Ur to Haran; but when they see the wide
stream in
front, and realise how completely the other side is
separated from
all that is familiar, they take another thought, and
conclude they
have come far enough, and Haran will serve their
turn.
Again, the phrase teaches us the certain issue of
patient pilgrimage
and persistent purpose. There is no mystery in
getting to the
journey's end. 'One foot up, and the other foot
down,' continued
long enough, will bring to the goal of the longest
march. It looks a
weary journey, and we wonder if we shall ever get
thither. But the
magic of 'one step at a time' does it. The guide is
also the
upholder of our way. 'Every one of them appeareth
before God in
Zion.'
3. The life in the land.--The first characteristic
of it is its
continual wandering. This is the feature which the
Epistle to the
Hebrews marks as significant. There was no reason
but his own choice
why Abram should continue to journey, and prefer to
pitch his tent
now under the terebinth tree of Moreh, now by
Hebron, rather than to
enter some of the cities of the land. He dwelt in
tents because he
looked for the city. The clear vision of the future
detached him, as
it will always detach men, from close participation
in the present.
It is not because we are mortal, and death is near
at the furthest,
that the Christian is to sit loose to this world,
but because he
lives by the hope of the inheritance. He must choose
to be a
pilgrim, and keep himself apart in feeling and aims
from this
present. The great lesson from the wandering life of
Abram is, 'Set
your affection on things above.' Cultivate the sense
of belonging to
another polity than that in the midst of which you
dwell. The
Canaanites christened Abram 'The Hebrew' (Genesis
xiv. 13), which
may be translated 'The man from the other side.'
That is the name
which all true Christians should deserve. They
should bear their
foreign extraction in their faces, and never be
naturalised subjects
here. Life is wholesomer in the tent under the
spreading tree, with
the fresh air blowing about us and clear sky above,
than in the
Canaanite city.
Observe, too, that Abram's life was permeated with
worship. Wherever
he pitches his tent, he builds an altar. So he fed
his faith, and
kept up his communion with God. The only condition
on which the
pilgrim life is possible, and the temptations of the
world cease to
draw our hearts, is that all life shall be filled
with the
consciousness of the divine presence, our homes
altars, and
ourselves joyful thankofferings. Then every abode is
blessed. The
undefended tent is a safe fortress, in which
dwelling we need not
envy those who dwell in palaces. Common tasks will
then be fresh,
full of interest, because we see God in them, and
offer them up to
Him. The wandering life will be a life of walking
with God, and
progressive knowledge of Him; and over all the
roughnesses and the
sorrows and the trivialities of it will be spread
'the light that
never was on sea or land, the consecration' of God's
presence, and
the peacefulness of communion with Him.
Again, we may notice that the life of obedience was
followed by
fuller manifestations of God, and of His will. God
'appeared' when
Abram was in the land. Is it not always true that
obedience is
blessed by closer vision and more knowledge? To him
that hath shall
be given; and he who has followed the unseen Guide
through dimly
discerned paths to an invisible goal, will be
gladdened when he
reaches the true Canaan, by the sight of Him whom,
having not seen,
he loved. Even here on earth obedience is the path
to fuller
knowledge; and when the pilgrims who have left all
and followed the
Captain of salvation through a deeper, darker stream
than Abram
crossed, have touched the other side, God will
appear to them, and
say, as the enraptured eye gazes amazed on the
goodly land, 'Arise,
walk through the land in the length of it and in the
breadth of it;
for I will give it unto thee.'
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