I saw a sign on a window in Baltimore one day that said, "JUST BELIEVE." What did that mean? Just believe what? That red is green, and the earth is flat, and the moon is made of cheddar? Everyone admits that we are saved by Grace through faith. But what is FAITH? What does it mean to "believe in Jesus Christ?" We talk about it, we sing about it, but what does the action involve? What is it that separates faith from work on one hand and gullibility on the other? We are in a passage today that describes HOW Abraham believed God, which should help sharpen our definition of faith.

16 Therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all 17 (as it is written, "I have made you a father of many nations") in the presence of Him whom he believed – God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did.

A. It started in God’s presence – "In the presence of Him whom he believed" – When you drop the parenthetical phrase (as it is written, "I have made you a father of many nations") and read it, "to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, being in the presence of Him," or it took place in the presence of Him whom he believed," we see the location of Abraham’s faith. It’s the "Him" who is so important here. Apart from the "Him" there would be no faith. We are not talking about Mary or one of the saints inspiring his faith. We’re not talking about Abraham suddenly taking a religious turn. Faith begins "in the presence of Him," God Himself, not with me, the individual. It’s not "MY" faith, as if I am originating something spiritual. It begins with God’s promise of God’s work. Faith is simply a response to the Grace He promises.

What a great promise! Anyone else want to come up and make a commitment? Let me make five observations about Tom’s promise: (1) was there faith before he spoke? Did I "believe" Tom when he walked up and I looked at him? No, there was nothing to believe when he was just looking at me, unless it came from something I knew about him before. (2) When he spoke the words he "encouraged" upon me a response. I had to do something. You don’t just stand there and look at the person when he promises you a million dollars! You have to respond in some way to both his person and promise. (3) I had two basic choices as to how to respond – I could have called him a liar, or I could have responded in "faith," disbelief or belief. (4) Each of those responses would lead to some further action. When I trusted him I would say, "thank you Tom," and call Claudia McAllister and ask her for the names of 30 new missionaries that need supporting. And then I would call Ginger King and Gina Rohrer and ask what money we needed to spend downstairs on the children’s programs. And then I would call Ravi Waldon and ask him to get busy designing a new building. If I were to distrust him, I would ignore the promise, or ask certain trustees to visit him and talk to him about his habit of promising more than he could deliver. (5) Do you think that I would be able to respond to this event by saying, "well I had an immense amount of faith today." "We have $5 million coming to BBC because of my faith!" Do you see that "my faith" has nothing to do with the promise? It didn’t generate the promise; it didn’t encourage the promise; it didn’t direct the promise. Everything started with Tom, and he was the one who provided the opportunity to believe and supplied the results of our belief.

In a similar but much greater way it all starts with God. He is the source of faith; He is the source of our relationship with Him. All that comes from us is a "yes," and an agreement, a response. Listen to Jesus speaking to the woman at the well, "whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never thirst." "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that says to you ‘give me to drink,’ you would have asked of him and he would have given you living water." Think about that promise. He is saying, "I will give you the water of life which will forever quench your thirst." "It will spring up into eternal life." What does that promise do to the woman? It "encourages" her to make a choice, of either believing Him or rejecting His promise. That is where faith begins. It begins with God and His promise.

And that is how we share the gospel – we communicate the promises of God, and tell the story of how we believed the promise of Christ and He came into our hearts and transformed our lives. It starts in the presence of God. It’s not my faith that reaches out to God. It is God who reaches out to us. So no one can say, "I had an immense amount of faith today, and that’s why God blessed me and gave me living water!"

B. Abraham’s faith started with God’s WORD. Notice verse 17: "God who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did." The emphasis is on what God SAYS. He sets the definitions; He determines the rules; He reveals Himself and His world through His words. Therefore God is the one who states things the way He chooses. It is not my perception of "reality" that defines things. My perception can be totally misleading, because I know so little. The creator is the best judge of why things are here and what they are doing here, and where they are going.

Faith is one’s response to a word of another. Suppose you stand next to someone who never talks. Have you ever eaten a meal with someone who doesn’t talk? You are at someone’s house for dinner and the room is permeated with silence. What is that like? Seventy five percent of our personality is wrapped up with how we talk, and when we talk and how much we talk and the way we talk. We reveal ourselves through our words.

God does the same thing. Notice the stated characteristic of His words: He "gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did." God speaks of dead things as if there are alive and things which we can’t see as if they exist. Why? Because He speaks of reality that we can’t see or know nothing about. Take Abraham for example. He said to Abraham late one night, "your children are going to be numberless, just like the stars." Well now that’s quite a statement, because Abraham had no children. In fact, Abraham had broached the subject of his heir because he had no children.

God had assured him with the words, "I am your shield and exceedingly great reward." The promise arose in the context of Sodom and Gomorrah. In Genesis 14, Abraham had rescued his nephew Lot, and in the process had rescued the wealth and people of Sodom, who had been kidnaped by five kings in the north. As a result, legally all the riches of Sodom belonged to Abraham. As he returned victorious from the battle, Abraham met Melchizedek, the high priest of the Lord, who reminded him that all his success came from the Lord Most High. As a result, Abraham gave everything back to the king of Sodom. He didn’t keep even a shoelace. In the very next verse, God says to Abraham, "I am your shield and exceedingly great reward." And Abraham responds with, "what can you give me, since I don’t have any children?" "My greatest need is for someone to carry on the name and I have no one. Actually my present heir is a slave who was born in my house." "If you are my reward, I don’t know of anything you can reward me of more than children."

And God said, "come on outside and look at the night sky." "Count the stars." "Can you number them?" "Your children are going to be like that – numberless."

Do you see what God is doing? He is calling those things which do not exist as though they do exist. He is talking about Abraham’s children and grandchildren and great grandchildren and He is sort of naming them – Reuben, Judah, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David – and counting them, as if they are all there and He can add them all up and compare their number with the stars. And He is doing this before one of them has appeared on the scene. And He is doing this in the presence of a man who thinks that he knows from experience that they do not exist – and aren’t going to exist! He and Sara have tried to have children for 50 years. And God comes along and says, "wait a minute; I set the definitions here; I specify what is and what isn’t and what will be here and what won’t. Your children, Abraham? A numberless multitude!"

Isn’t that great? That’s where faith begins. Faith begins with the word of God. Have you ever thought about how God describes your life? He speaks of things that don’t exist as though they do. What things don’t exist in your life? Perhaps a promise like this: "I will make you a fisher of men." Have you ever thought about the fact that He will make you a witness? Acts 1:8, "you shall receive power after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth." God is speaking of something that you may not think exists, or even will exist.

"Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ." "For we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose." God speaks of a reality that you may doubt exists. And we have two possible responses: welcome His word, or call Him a liar.

II. God made His promise in the middle of contradictory evidence. He called those things which didn’t exist as though they did." In other words, God’s promise contradicted Abraham’s senses. It went against what Abraham was reading.

18 who, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken, "So shall your descendants be." 19 And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah's womb. 20 He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God,

A. He hoped. He contrary to hope, in hope believed. "Contrary to hope," means contrary to the hope that circumstances presented to him. The promise from God was a shock given normal human expectations from the circumstances. In other words it was a new hope that began with the promise of God in a hopeless situation.

Imagine that you are a 100 year old man standing there looking at the stars, and listening to God talk about all of your children. What would you say to yourself, and to Him? "Number one I don’t have any children, and number two, I’m not going to have any. I have a track record of no children. You can’t say that Sarah and I haven’t tried, but after 50 or 60 years of no children, I wouldn’t quickly conclude that I am going to have children like the number of stars."

The bottom line is that Abraham’s faith began with nothing on the horizon – except a word from God. There was not organ music playing, there wasn’t a rosy glow on the horizon in the darkness that suggested a new day was dawning. It was just the word of the sovereign, almighty God – in the middle of nothing! And Abraham accepted it and thanked God.

It’s one thing to trust the promise of God for children when you are 35 years old. But after you have watched your wife go through menopause, and you realize that not only are you too old to bear children, but too slow to keep up with them, it is a little different for someone to come and say to you, "you are going to have millions of children." Believing God at that time meant turning away from other evidence that was quite strong.

The key was in what Abraham concentrated on. Was his focus on, "you are dead, you are 100 years old, your wife can’t have any children?" Or was it on, "God said my children would be without number, which means that I have to start with one, which means that we are going to have a baby, no matter what it looks like, which means that we better start looking for diapers?" You can set your mind on what you see and keep saying, "this looks so bad, this looks impossible," or you can repeatedly say, "I have this promise of God, I have this promise." It comes down to what weight you put on the words from God.

This same procedure occurs with every circumstance that enters the computer screen of your life. Threatening circumstances come into your life. Do you let them scare you? Or do you concentrate on God’s promise in the situation? "I will never leave you or forsake you." "My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in your weakness." That’s why those promises are there, for those situations where it doesn’t look like His grace is sufficient, where it doesn’t look like He is there or that He is interested.

Isaiah 51:2 has this interesting verse: Look to Abraham your father, And to Sarah who bore you; For I called him alone, And blessed him and increased him." When God called Abraham, he was alone, the situation was bleak. He and Sara probably had the same reaction to God's promise that we do – "yes, that’s great, but it couldn’t happen to us." Abraham was "called," "blessed," and "made many" when he was one, an empty one. The great example of the past provides the hope for our future (Motyer, Isaiah, 404).

Have you ever felt "alone?" Welcome to the process of faith. That’s where God wants to meet you and introduce you to His promises. ALONE. Just you and Him. Nobody else. No other hope. "Alone" is usually a pretty negative experience. "Alone" often speaks of depression, or discouragement, or failure. But it is in those alone times that God can call the things which are not as if they are. He can plant in your life something that sounds impossible.

You say, "I’m too old to serve God, I don’t have anything to offer Him." Look at Abraham, and get encouraged. Your best days may be ahead of you. Whether you are too young, whether you are too old, whether you are not qualified, God has made promises to us in His word that are as life changing as the ones He made to Abraham.

III. Abraham responded to God’s promise. He built his life on the words that God spoke.

20 He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, 21 and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. 22 And therefore "it was accounted to him for righteousness." 23 Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, 24 but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, 25 who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification.

A. He became excited. It says, he gave glory to God. This was apparently before he saw any change in his circumstances. He is still 100, his body is still dead. Yet he doesn’t wait until he sees the promise before he gets excited, he responds to God’s words with a loud "glory." He moved, he acted, he got excited, even though he was alone with no kids! That is the way faith responds.

Have you ever taken any of God’s promises to us and actually gloried in them and praised God with exceeding great joy because of what He has stated that He wants to do in our circumstances? Have you told others of what He will do? Have you re-built your life on the basis of the promise, gearing yourself for the new life solely on the basis of the promise? Or have you said, "I’m from Missouri;"I’ll wait until I see it before I believe it?"

"Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Have you ever called? You can by faith call this morning. "My God shall supply all your needs." Have you given the rest of your money away generously because God will supply all your needs? If I believe that God will supply, I demonstrate that faith (to myself and others) by worrying less about hanging on to my funds and meeting more needs of others. I understand that this is what has recently happened in the men’s SS class. Some men in that class have made sacrifices to give a gift to someone in need, and I think that is great. It is an act of faith.

B. He was fully persuaded by God’s word. How do we know? How do we know that Christopher Columbus believed that the earth was round? Because he talked about it? Because he wrote a book about it? No, because he staked his life, fortune and future on it. He sailed to where the edge of the earth was and where he should have fallen off, and kept sailing. Abraham was "fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform," according to verse 21. Our faith is demonstrated to others and ourselves by what we commit ourselves to. A. W. Tozer says, "Any belief that does not command the one who has it, is not a real belief; it is a pseudo-belief only. And it might shock some of us profoundly if we were brought suddenly face to face with our beliefs and forced to test them in the fires of practical living" (from The Price of Neglect).

The reason why we have the record of Abraham’s faith is because we have a similar opportunity as Abraham did. God wants us to respond like Abraham. As the writer to Hebrews says "but without faith it is impossible to please him" (11:6). Our life with God is a walk of faith. You come by faith to Christ for salvation and He saves you. Then you come by faith to Christ for strength, and He answers. Then you ask for wisdom and guidance, and He graciously supplies. Then you ask for comfort, and encouragement, and a ministry, and friends to help you, and salvation for others, and the outreach of the gospel, and on and on, and you find that life with God is a continuing series of steps of faith. That’s what it was for Abraham as well as for us, who believe in Him who raised up Jesus from the dead.

Think of what kind of response of faith God is waiting for you to make. The ball is in your court. He has already given the promise. What promise does He want you to respond to in faith? Are you following in Abraham’s steps?

04/10/05, BBC am

04/12/05, 08Rom4'16-25.MEF