Consider Abraham and Sarah again. God waited twenty-five years before He fulfilled the promise that He gave to them. If we would care to look, you could go back to Romans 4:19 and Hebrews 11:11. Both of those verses confirm each other. God purposely waited until neither Abraham nor Sarah were capable of producing a child. They exhibited faith during the 25 years, but God manipulated circumstances so that Abraham and Sarah, regardless of their great faith, regardless of their belief, regardless of how they acted upon what they believed, they would know that God worked a miracle. God gave them grace in order to fulfill His own promise to them.
Abraham and Sarah had to do what they did, but that still did not fulfill God's Word. It was only a response God expected them to do. Now they are examples that are held up to us because they did do the right thing, but you see this sets a pattern, that as we go through life, God expects us to exercise faith, and there are times that He is going to bring us to our own personal Red Seas, that even though He brings us to the Red Sea, we have to understand that He is the one that parts the water.
If we wanted to follow Abraham and Sarah, would we not see that they had their problems? They failed along the way. God only shows us a couple of them. They might have failed ten or fifteen times more times than God showed us during that twenty-five years. They never forgot their basic responsibility to God. Sarah tried to get Abraham a child through Hagar. That was not the right thing to do. Abraham went along with it. That was not the right thing to do. It was not an act of faith.
You see we can learn from this. God is going to take us to where we understand that we are saved in spite of our weaknesses and that salvation comes by grace. But He still expects us to exhibit faith. Because if we do, then there is going to be steady growth. Not that we will never fail, but there is going to be steady growth from the time of our conception to the time of our birth into His family. So, we will fail tests along the way, but He patiently keeps on working with us. It is not the end of the story, and on we go.
And so, the whole Bible largely consists of showing God carrying out obligations that He has set Himself to do. And, He has done this in order that we will come to understand to trust His Word. God is faithful, because that is His nature. With Him there is no variableness, nor shadow of turning. There is no change because of unseen circumstances; there is no failure; His power is never exhausted; and His faithfulness is the basis of our faith in Him.
Do you understand that this is the major problem in the world? Just before we left home (Charlotte, N.C.) one of the items in the news was a poll that had recently been taken of Americans, asking them whether they believed in God. Ninety-five percent of the persons polled responded affirmatively. They believe in God.
What is the trouble? They do not believe Him. They believe He exists, but they do not believe Him. It is that simple, is it not? They believe He exists, but they do not believe what He says.
This is our challenge! Do we believe what He says?
I have gone through this whole thing to show you that you are hand-picked to show forth the praises of Him who has called you.
And the way we do this is to believe Him.
Do you understand why He says in Deuteronomy 30, It is not hard? It is not inaccessible! It is simple! These things are so simple! They are profound in their ramifications! But, the principles themselves are so simple that our faith in Him is based on His faithfulness.
So He spends the whole book giving us illustrations of how faithful He is, so that we can have faith. And if we have faith, and it is underlain with the fear of God, the chances are so great that we are going to make the right choice; it is almost a foregone conclusion that we will.
Let us go back to Hebrews 11. We are going to look at something in reference to Sarah, who was a woman of faith.
Our God is the faithful God. What He says comes to past. We may not live to see it come to pass - even as these people all died in faith. But they had sufficient faith to know that, even though they were going to die, nonetheless what God had promised to them was going to be done; and in their next conscious thought they were going to see the fulfillment of the very thing that He promised to them.
He is the faithful God, and His faithfulness is what is the ground - the support, the foundation - of our faith. We cannot live by faith, at all, unless we believe that we have a God who is absolutely faithful in everything that He says, and that He always carries through. You cannot trust a God in whom there is variableness, who changes circumstances without any good and loving reason, who forgets, who has Senior moments (like I do, very frequently).
He is the reason for our salvation. He started it, by giving us grace. He chose to love you - to allow you to come to know Him as the faithful God - in order that you can live by faith, and be prepared for the coming of His Son.
Did she ever think, when she came into contact with God through her husband Abraham, that she would have a baby when she was 90 years old? Oh my. I am telling you, Evelyn would have conniptions. And I think any woman would have conniptions.
