Focal Point

Dave Drewy: Today on Focal Point with Pastor Mike Fabarez.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: We need to embrace the hard to believe grace in God's promises. Abram would become Abraham and become the leader of Judaism and eventually the great genealogical father of Christ, the Redeemer of the world. It's for no reason. It sounds a lot like God. The promise of God to Abraham is a promise of grace.

Guest (Male): Does God ever break a promise? While the right answer is no, there can be moments when we might feel differently. When dealing with unanswered prayers or unfulfilled needs, we wonder, does God truly do what he says?

Today on Focal Point, Mike Fabarez continues our miniseries in Hebrews called When God Makes a Promise. Together, we'll look at the guarantees God made with Abraham. By the end of our half hour together, we'll come to a deeper appreciation for just how reliable God truly is. Here is Pastor Mike.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: I have learned, like most of you, that marriage is full of surprises, particularly that first year. What some people call being newlyweds, others just call an adjustment of life.

It is one thing to date your girlfriend and take her to Bob's Big Boy on Saturday night. I am revealing too much with that, but it is another to be signing your contract for your new apartment and moving in together and trying to figure out who gets what drawer and what to put on the counter of the sink and what kind of things are going to hang on the wall in the hallway. That's an interesting year of adjustment.

I was 21 when I got married and I remember just waking up to all kinds of new realities. I grew up without a sister. I had a brother. For instance, we had one small closet in our bedroom that we shared for 18 years of my life. It was three-by-two maybe. That might be an exaggeration. It was very small. We shared that and it seemed to work out just fine with about a three-foot rod that hung there.

Then we moved into this little apartment, which was so modern. It was wonderful because it had this big closet, we thought. It was at least four and a half feet long. I thought, "Wow, this is going to be just so roomy. What are we going to do with all this?" My wife starts bringing in clothes that I had never seen before. I dated her for five years and I am thinking, "What are those? Whose are those? I've never seen you wear those before."

I can safely say too that my brother and I between us probably had about four pairs of shoes. We would replace them when we needed to. We had one for school. We had a pair for school and church. We weren't that poor. But I remember my wife bringing in the boxes of shoes. I just didn't realize how that all worked. It was a year of adjustment.

Don't get me wrong. I married a great gal. You know her and, of course, I married up. She's fantastic. I don't deserve her. But not having ever done it before, I realized that it was a year of surprises. I recognize that as Christians, we step into our relationship with God in a similar fashion in that we have wonderful expectations of the God that we're stepping into this relationship with. He is obviously perfect. It couldn't be a better arrangement, or so it seems on paper.

It doesn't take long to realize that the first year, if not the first ten, become a year of surprises, a decade of surprises. It is a time of recognizing that God, who on paper would seem to be a wonderful person to relate to, has several ways of doing things that are completely foreign to the way that we would expect him to do things.

Think about the first month of your Christian life. You are anticipating what it would be like after you had just freshly committed your life to follow Jesus. There is that sense that church was always going to be this wonderful utopian community, that Bible study would always be this rich feast of edifying material, that in your prayer life you would ask and this God who loves you and sent his son to die for you is just going to respond quickly to every need and every request that you send his way.

Expectation after expectation, it proves to be a little different in reality. It's not that God is not great. It's not that he doesn't love us. It's just that the adjustment of trying to relate to a God in the real world here and now is a little different than I think some would sketch out in theory.

There are several who are pulled off the pages of the Scripture from the Old Testament and exalted as templates and examples in the New. We have wonderful heroes of the faith. As a matter of fact, when we get to the 11th chapter of Hebrews, we're going to laundry list. I don't know how long it will take to get through that chapter when we see name after name after name of people that the New Testament writers said are just incredible examples for us.

One of them I think that has to be up at the top is the personage of the early part of the book of Genesis named Abraham. Abraham is unique in that even James, the brother of Christ, calls him a friend of God. What an amazing thing. Can you imagine that?

What is interesting about Moses being called such a godly, faith-filled friend of God is that his life, when you look at it carefully in the Old Testament, is really not what we would expect for someone that is so highly favored in God's eyes. As a matter of fact, his life is filled with a lot of difficulties and trials and struggles and adjusting to the way that God treats him.

It is no surprise then that the writer of Hebrews, when he's trying to relate to the people who had stepped into this thing called the Christian life and then found themselves surrounded by the difficulty that that decision brought them, would bring to the forefront this man named Abraham and say, "Hey, if you want to know what it's like to follow a God who is faithful, who makes good promises and loves us, but then doesn't always work everything out the way we think it should go, look at Abraham because there's an example."

There is an example of not only a faith-filled servant of God but an example of how God deals with his people and sometimes in a confusing way that might leave the immature Christian thinking, "Well, maybe God doesn't love me. Maybe God isn't as good as he's cracked up to be and maybe God isn't going to fulfill all the promises that I read about in the New Testament all the time."

Abraham is a good example. That's why in the middle of this discussion about God's fidelity and his promises, the writer of Hebrews brings him up. What you need to know as you turn to Hebrews chapter 6, if you haven't already, is that this is an emphasis on God's dealing with Abraham.

The other side of the coin is how Abraham responded to God. We learn about it in this text, but that's not the point. The point here is look at how God dealt with Abraham. The point in chapter 11, as we'll see as there is lots of discussion about Abraham's response to God, is that Abraham did a very good job in points in his life of responding the way that God expects. Indeed, he is a hero of every virtue in the Christian life. In particular, he is a hero as it relates to faith.

We have to pause in 11 to look at how Christians ought to respond to God. But in chapter 6, what we're trying to figure out is, is God reliable? Is he faithful to his promises? Is God going to be a God who delivers and comes through? The example of Abraham is brought up.

Here it is in verse number 13: "When God made his promise to Abraham." Again, what's the point? Look back at verse number 12. If you've got your Bibles open, he doesn't want us to become lazy. He wants us to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised. We should be like those people.

Example number one, verse 13. Think about Abraham. But let's talk about the fact that God is a God who keeps his promise. Note the way, for instance, God swears that he is going to keep his promise. Middle of verse 13: "Since there was no one greater for him," that is God, "to swear by, God swore by himself saying, 'I will surely bless you and I will give you many descendants,'" an oft-repeated promise from God to Abraham.

So after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised. That's really the gist of this text as it goes on to talk about the solemnity of God's promises in verses 16, 17, 18. The point is Abraham got what God promised, at least the version of it that was at least satisfying enough for Abraham to know that ultimately God is a God who keeps all of his promises. God came through for Abraham.

What we need to do is to recognize that the way he came through for Abraham is not the way you and I would write it out if we were to try and say, "Well, here's the ideal template of God fulfilling his promises." As a matter of fact, let's just survey real quickly a little bit of how God did this in Abraham's life and we'll come away, I trust, this afternoon with four points, germane points to our Christian life.

Turn with me, if you would, to the story of Abraham beginning in the bottom of Genesis chapter 11. God makes a promise to Abraham and he swears that he is going to carry it out. Indeed, he does. He carries out his promise to Abraham.

Abraham is lauded as a great godly man among Christians. He's lauded as a great man of faith among Jews. He's even lauded as a wonderful and great prophet second only to Muhammad in the Quran. He's mentioned 188 times in the Quran. It seems like all the religious people who've ever intersected the text of Scripture think, "Wow, there's a great man."

It's important for us to do in beginning in chapter 11, though we'll camp in chapter 12 where God makes a promise to Abraham, is to recognize that when we meet him in the text of Scripture, the only thing great about Abraham is the greatness of the irony of his name. He is not at all great.

When we meet him in the bottom of chapter 11, we learn something of his lineage and who he belongs to and who his father is and all of this. We find out his name is Abram. That's his name. Now, in Hebrew, Abram means great father. Great father.

In a culture and in an ancient Mesopotamia where few things meant more than your progeny and your lineage and the people that you are raising in your clan and your family, Abraham was a real dramatic failure. Not only did he not have children, but his name was great father and no one had ever called him that because he was married to Sarah, and Sarah was barren. She had no children.

We meet Abraham at age 75. All hope of children at this point was pretty much gone. He's living in Ur of the Chaldees. He moves to Haran. It's southern Iraq. It's at the bottom of the Tigris and Euphrates River. God is going to meet him here and say, "Okay, you, living far away from the future focus of God's attention, you great father who have no children, I've got a deal here for you."

It's a pretty one-sided deal. It's a promise that I'm going to make to you about your future. Now begin chapter 12, verse number one. Here comes the promise to Abraham. Yahweh had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people, and your father's household and go to the land I will show you."

Does that sound a little bit like Christ coming to the shores of the Sea of Galilee, pointing his finger in the chest of some Galilean fisherman and saying, "Leave your nets and come and follow me"? Typical crisis of: are you going to make God your priority? Are you going to do what you want or are you going to do what I want?

It's the crisis that if you're a Christian, we've all faced. It is the place of beginning for the Christian life. It is the place of beginning for everyone who's going to encounter God and come out on the side of the James commentary of being a friend of God. The call goes out to this man, Abram, great father with no kids. Come, leave your country, your people, your father's household and go to the land I'll show you.

That's a great call but look at verse number two. Here comes the promise. "I will make you into a great nation. 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 the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you."

So Abram left as Yahweh had told him and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he set out from Haran. This is an amazing statement for a 75-year-old man who's married to an infertile wife and he's being told by God you're going to be great.

You can search high and low throughout all of Scripture. You can read the rabbinic writings. You can look at all the Judaic commentaries. You can search high and low for a reason that God shows up and picks this guy to be a father of a great nation and you're going to come up empty-handed. There's no revelatory reason for the choosing of Abram.

Abram would become Abraham and become the leader of Judaism and eventually the great genealogical father of Christ, the Redeemer of the world. He's chosen without any discussion as to why he's chosen. It sounds a lot like God.

This is a purely gracious choice of God. God looks at him not because he's a winner. Does this sound like Paul in the New Testament book of 1 Corinthians? He doesn't pick him because he's a wonderful leader of a great clan and you seem to do well with lots of kids and grandkids around you. You seem like a fantastic leader of a future nation. I pick you. It's for no reason other than that God shows up on the scene, looks for a guy in southern Iraq who has no kids, a barren wife and wishes he had some children, a failure to his culture, has no progeny, no lineage, no clan.

He says, "You. Why don't you come with me and come to this place and I'm going to make you a great nation?" The promise of God to Abraham is a promise of grace. It is a promise of grace that Abraham would stumble over. It's a promise of grace that a lot of us stumble over. It's a kind of grace that religious people today have stumbled over all over the country and around the world.

Number one on your outline. It's important for us just like Abram to embrace the hard to believe grace in God's promises. In Genesis 17:17, it says that when Abraham pondered the promise as God retold it to him, as he did in Genesis 12, Genesis 15, Genesis 17, Genesis 22. In chapter 17, Abraham laughs. In chapter 18, Sarah laughs. They just think this is just unbelievable. It's not going to happen.

You know the story. You know about Hagar, you know about Ishmael, you know about the handmaid. You know about these guys going, "I don't believe this is true. I don't believe it can happen." They're trying to short-circuit God's promises. They have a hard time believing it and yet this guy ends up being the father of faith.

In reality, it's a tough thing to believe because it is such an amazing promise that some guy living in some clan in the bottom of the Mesopotamian Valley is going to be called out by God without a family, not a success, not a cultural winner. He's a loser by all accounts when God meets him and says, "I'm going to make you the greatest leader of the greatest nation of the greatest lineage of spiritual people who believe me and trust me that the world has ever seen."

It is a promise of grace and Abraham stumbled over it. He had a hard time embracing it but eventually he does. God wants to drive the point home so firmly. He promises this to him in chapter 12. We call this the Abrahamic covenant. He reiterates it with a blood sacrifice in chapter 15.

He does it again in chapter 18 and makes the promise to Abraham a third time and a fourth time in chapter 22. He says, "I swear to you, I'm going to make you a great nation." God makes promise after promise after promise and even changes his name in the middle of this narrative from great father, Abram, to Abraham, father of a great nation.

Again, he's building on a promise. He makes an oath of that promise, but there's no sign of fulfillment yet. As a matter of fact, we go quite a few chapters before he even has his first child, let alone grandchildren or great-grandchildren.

Keep your finger here if you would and turn with me to Ephesians chapter 2. In this dramatic text of the New Testament, we shouldn't be able to miss the connection between what we've just read and what God is promising to us and saying about us as New Testament believers in Ephesians chapter 2.

If we see Abraham from the perspective of prior to Genesis 12, you start to get a bit of the feel of what Paul is trying to get us to imagine about our own state in Ephesians chapter 2. Look at verse number one. Familiar verses to you, I recognize, but read them again.

As for you, here Paul looking to a Jew and Gentile connected composite of a church in a letter that probably went to all kinds of churches in Asia Minor, a circulatory letter to all kinds of churches. He says, "Listen, all of you throughout all of Asia Minor who are trusting in Christ, you need to recognize this: you were dead in your transgressions and sin."

I think about that statement and I think about the statement that Jesus made to the church saying you have a reputation that you're alive in this particular church where they weren't converted and he says, "But you're dead." I look at Abraham having a name, great father, but he's not a great father. He is in reality destitute of any lineage. He doesn't have any. He has no kids, no future, nobody to give his inheritance to.

You look at us in the Bible and the Bible says you feel very much alive. As a matter of fact, the next verse says you lived, but it was a kind of living that really wasn't living at all. It was a living where you followed the ways of the world, verse two, and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit that's now at work in those who are disobedient.

From God's perspective, you're dead. You're nothing from God's perspective to warrant his love, to attract him to give you his promises, his redemption, or a future place in the kingdom. You don't have anything to make that a logical choice for God.

Yet God in this text, it says, after all of this laundry list of terrible things that are the natural inclinations of our heart, sums it up in the bottom of verse three saying we had nothing to look forward to but God's wrath. Look at verse number four. But because of his great love for us. If you stopped right there, you'd say, "Well, now why? Why would God love people who are following their own way and are from his perspective spiritually dead?"

It doesn't give us an explanation. Much like the mystery of Abraham. Why would God choose Abraham? I don't know. He just did. In his sovereign choice, he set his love and his covenant promise on Abraham. If you don't feel the same way, you don't understand grace. That's what this text is all about.

Because of his great love, keep reading, God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions. Here's the phrase to underline: it is by grace that you've been saved.

The point of the choice of you being a part of the body of Christ is parallel to the promise God makes to Abraham. It is unwarranted. I know sometimes as Christians from a very human perspective, we can start to think, "I'm a Christian because I was smarter than the next guy who couldn't figure out he needed the gospel." That's not what the Bible teaches at all.

God isn't going through the hospital ward of life looking for someone to get healthy. He's walking through the morgue. In the morgue, nobody's interested in being healthy. Nobody wanting an aspirin. Nobody saying, "Hey, can you turn up my medication?" Nobody wants a drink of water. Nobody's calling out, crying out. It sounds a lot like Romans chapter 3. No one is seeking after God.

It is a myth for us to imagine that we're all here with a little inkling of God in our hearts and all of us have some level of craving for God. We don't. According to a text like this, we are dead and God walks through in his sovereign plan and reaches out and places his sovereign love on people.

He says to folks, even though you're dead, verse four, because of my great love, my mercy, verse five, I'm going to make you alive in Christ. And God who raised Christ up is going to raise us up and seat us, verse six says, in heavenly places.

Dave Drewy: Like Abraham, we've done nothing to merit the incredible promises of God. They're simply a result of God's love for us. You're listening to Pastor Mike Fabarez on Focal Point.

His message is based on our miniseries in Hebrews titled When God Makes a Promise. And it will continue tomorrow, so be sure to listen then. You can also access these teachings online at focalpointradio.org or download the Focal Point app to your mobile device.

Before we close out today's program, we want to invite you to get your copy of our featured resource, a book that provides invaluable insight into one of Scripture's central themes. It's titled All the Promises of the Bible. This authoritative study catalogs every pledge God extends throughout his word, showing how these commitments speak directly to our lives as believers.

From declarations about his care and nearness to guarantees concerning our eternal future, author Herbert Lockyer shows how God's promises emerge from his immutable nature. Request your copy of All the Promises of the Bible when you give to Focal Point today. Call our team at 888-320-5885 or give online at focalpointradio.org.

Or if you'd rather send your donation by mail, just write to Focal Point, Post Office Box 2850, Laguna Hills, California 92654. When you support Focal Point, whether through a single donation or by becoming a monthly partner, you're sharing the faithful teaching of biblical truth across the nation.

As a partner, you'll receive Pastor Mike's hand-selected materials delivered every month while your reliable generosity helps us bring solid teaching to new listeners. Start your partnership today by calling us at 888-320-5885 or join online at focalpointradio.org.

Reaching out to Focal Point for the first time? Well, we'd be delighted to welcome you. Request Pastor Mike's free booklet, Promises, Promises, when you contact us. Simply call 888-320-5885 or reach out online at focalpointradio.org.

I'm Dave Drewy, inviting you to come back next time when our study in Hebrews continues. Hear more about When God Makes a Promise Thursday on Focal Point with Mike Fabarez.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Pastor Mike here. Ever wish you could corner your pastor and challenge him with your toughest questions about the Bible, about faith? Well, now you can. Send me your questions. Head on over to focalpointradio.org and click on Ask Pastor Mike. Or send me a note on facebook.com/pastormike or twitter.com/pastormike. I can’t wait to hear from you.

Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.