If you would, please turn to Isaiah 51. We will see a direct command to do just this.
Who is He talking to? He is really talking to us. The heading says here, The Lord Comforts Zion. That is who He is talking to, this Zion. And it seems to be a type of the church here, but He talks specifically to those who are pursuing righteousness. That is us, right? We are the ones pursuing righteousness.
He is telling the church, those who have been called, to go back to Abraham and to Sarah and look at how God worked with them and how they responded to Him and how He then had to correct them and help them and test them. He is saying, If you go back there and watch how I looked at him and how I developed him over the years, because God called him at 75 and he lived about 100 years after that. So God spent a long time with Abraham and with Sarah bringing them up in the way that they should go, as a father would bring up his children. And so He is telling these people, those who pursue God and pursue righteousness, to go back there and see the example of Abraham and Sarah.
And of course, He wants us also to see Himself, for us to see Him in His working so we can understand just how He works with us. He works with us the same way he worked with Abraham. It's the same kind of relationship. Abraham was a great man, sure. And God knew that he had a pearl there that was of great price, as it were. But you know, you are the same way in His eyes. He loves you like He loved Abraham. As a matter of fact, it says that He loves us like He like He loves Christ!
We need to understand that when we go back and look at the example of Abraham and Sarah, that God is going to complete us, work with us, mature us along those same lines. And as He was faithful to Abraham, He will be faithful to us. And as Abraham was faithful to Him, well, we can be faithful to Him in the same way. We have what it takes. He would not have called us if we did not have what it takes. And we know from the promises that He will not let anyone snatch us out of His hand. (That is in John 10.) So here is this command to go back to the beginning, to go back to the originals, and see how it was then.
Now, if you are thinking of these people who pursue righteousness in terms of the Israelites, actually, it works with us as well. But what these two verses suggest is that the people He is talking to had a righteousness that left a bit to be desired. Otherwise there would not be the command or the advice to go back and look. Because He is trying to correct them, to improve them and so He says, Look, wherever you are now in the realm of righteousness, you know, or you just getting started or you're halfway along till the time when you'll finally die, whatever it is, go back and look because you have areas in which you can improve. So look at Abraham and look at Sarah and see what was produced from that raw material. The same could be done for you.
So what He wanted them to do, these people - us - was to return to bedrock. Look at the foundation, go back to the place where this Family of God started. Look at how level it is. Look at how square it is. Look how careful God was in His beginnings and learn the lessons.
We will look all the way back to the patriarch Abraham - that is something like 4,000 years ago. It is a long journey back in time, so let us take a rest stop. We will stop in the days of Isaiah. There in Isaiah 51, God issues what might appear at first to be a very strange command. I am going to read from the New American Standard Bible. God says:
What is it about Abraham that would make God instruct us to look back to him - back to a person whose times and whose culture were so very different from those of our own? What could we possibly learn by looking back to Abraham? I think the answer there lies in the absolute fact, as it says there in Isaiah 51, that Abraham is our father. That is a fact; and we will see it is not just a metaphor.
We will not turn to Romans 4:16, but it provides a New Testament witness to that fact. There Paul says that Abraham is the father of us all. In Galatians 3:29 (And do not turn there yet; we are going to be coming back and spending some time in Galatians, but we will not take the time to turn there right now.), Paul mentions that we who are Christ's are Abraham's seed. This father-son relationship between Abraham and God's people is not just metaphorical.
In fact, so real is this relationship that Paul continues in verse 29 declaring that God's people inherit after their father Abraham; we are heirs according to the promise. That is exactly what sons do from their fathers - they inherit. This is a very real father-son relationship.
But, what promise are we speaking of here? Promise by whom? Promise to whom? In Romans 9 (And I will ask you to turn there if you want), Paul provides a very straightforward answer to those questions about the promise. Here Paul epitomizes - perhaps we should use the word summarizes - the promise into a few words.
There is a similar thought in Isaiah 51:1. We use this primarily as a reference to Abraham, but it looks beyond Abraham to God Himself:
Now, if we look back to Abraham, it is obvious that the Israelites were the seed of Abraham. They were the physical descendants of Abraham, and here in the next verse God through Isaiah tells them to go back to the faith of Abraham and Sarah, and return to their beginnings. It is almost like, Return to your first love. Go back to the faith once delivered, as Bill Cherry talked about earlier today in the sermonette [Contend for the Faith].
Behind all this is, Who made Abraham? The Rock, which is Jesus Christ, which is the God of the Old Testament. He is the Father, He is The Rock from which we were hewn; from which we were made.
Now, this is the first area where we can pay attention. We need to pay attention here as the end approaches.
The first point here is, Concentrate on the faith once delivered to the Saints - Jude 3. Concentrate on the faith once delivered to the Saints. Do not be distracted and confused by peripheral issues and unimportant ideas. This is the crunch time. The trunk of the tree is the part you hold on to, not the twigs. Twigs will snap. The tree will stay in place.
You could also say, if you want an example, remember and follow the faith of Abraham, the father of the faithful. He is the one that it all began with. So, go back to that, the faith of Abraham.
