Walking In The Steps Of Our Father Abraham
WALKING IN THE STEPS OF OUR FATHER ABRAHAM
Romans 4: 11, 12; 3: 21-26; 4: 25: 5: 1, 2: 5: 15
Thesepassages set out the mind of God for every one of the sons of men. We are now in the days that these chapters refer to, and what it says is that certain persons walk in the steps of our father Abraham, so that we gather that our father Abraham not only believed but went on step by step. Hebrews is the race, where we lay aside every weight, and sin which so easily besets us. Romans is the walk of the believer in faith; he takes one step after another, and he walks like our father Abraham. So God would bring our father Abraham right up close to us in this way; for the Spirit of God can bring our father Abraham right up into our company tonight to show us how to get on in the gospel, how to get on in the knowledge of God, how to progress, how to make advance in faith and in the knowledge of God. We want to do that. If anybody has not started, they can start like Abraham. Anybody here who has not started in the path of faith can start, because God preached the gospel to Abraham; so Abraham had to start, or else he could never have walked. There would be no sense in talking about walking if he had never started. So he started when God preached the gospel to him; just the same gospel in one sense that we are going to preach tonight, because everything was anticipative of the incarnation and death of the Lord Jesus. Everybody who was blessed before the Lord came in was blessed on the basis of what He would do when He came in. There was no virtue in the blood of the animals save as it typified Christ. In themselves there was not any virtue, no virtue in any blood save the blood of Jesus! Then think of the virtue and power of the blood of Jesus that would extend right back to Adam, right back to that guilty pair who disobeyed God and lost their privileges. That is what they did, and they were never restored to their privileges. They were turned out of the garden; but God met them in His mercy and in virtue of the blood of Jesus He forgave them and covered them. So we can go back to Adam, we can go on to the last person blessed in time, and the same applies; that is the efficacy of the blood of Jesus! It never loses its power, and it never will! In the eternal day I suppose the blood of Jesus will always be a witness to the rights of God, the majesty of God, and to the way in which God has been able to have persons in His universe that are suitable to Him, suited in righteousness and grace before Him.
So we have Abraham right in our company tonight, “our father Abraham”. You are in the family of Abraham if you believe, this great patriarch on whom God sets so much store. He preached the gospel to him Himself, just as Jesus preached the gospel to Paul. He did not send Philip to preach the gospel to Saul of Tarsus; he was too precious a vessel, so the Lord said, ‘I will do it Myself and see that it is well done and that it is completed’. Not, of course, that He did not trust His apostles and did not trust Philip, but the vessel was so precious that the Lord said, ‘I will do it all myself’. And that is what God said about Abraham, ‘He is such a vessel that I will have to go and preach down in Mesopotamia myself’. So there He went, God with His glory, down into Mesopotamia, to preach to our father Abraham, to extricate him from his sins and his idolatry. God went Himself, and took His glory with Him. That is what Stephen said in Acts 7: 2: “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia”. So there was God going all the way down to Mesopotamia with His glory, and He preached the gospel to Abraham and brought Him out. That is what the gospel is for, to bring us out of the world; not in one sense to take us to heaven, but to bring us out of the world, and to bring us into God’s world. That is what the gospel is for, to bring us out of one world and put us into another. You say, ‘I thought forgiveness was the end’. Forgiveness is the beginning, that is all! So if you have forgiveness you just took one step. How many have you taken since? If you do not feel inclined to walk any more, everybody will have to carry you! That is not the gospel; that is not God’s gospel at any rate; no, God is the source of His own gospel, and Christ is the Centre of God’s gospel. The Person who is the centre of the gospel is Christ. You are not the centre, in your need, neither am I, although I thought I was, but then God disillusioned me, took all those thoughts out of my soul and mind, that I was the centre of the gospel; and taught me that Christ was the centre of His gospel, and He was the source of it. So how wonderful it is; God is really a wonderful Being, is He not? He could have dwelt in light unapproachable, and I suppose the Deity could have subsisted by themselves if they had liked, because they were sufficient for one another, because the name of God really means what He is in an absolute way outside of all that is relative. But God has come into time and revealed Himself in the Person of Jesus, that He might spend an eternity with families, families of men. That is the gospel, is it not? So we have Abraham our father here tonight to show us what the gospel is, and what the glory of it is, and what the steps of our father Abraham are. So it is, and so it began. Romans 3 is a chapter of mercy, chapter 4 the chapter of light, chapter 5 the chapter of sunshine; they are all in the gospel. That is only beginning, only three steps; only three steps you take, and you are in Romans 5. How beautiful that is! And you take a few more and you are in Romans 8! And you take a few more and you are in Romans 12! And you take a few more and you are in Ephesians! God says, ‘If you want to listen to the gospel, I will charm you into it tonight. I have thundered at you and you do not seem to move; so I will charm you into it tonight’. And God can do it, as He is so charming in Jesus, is He not? Yes, so charming in Jesus! God knew how to win man; He sent Jesus to win man, for Jesus is God, and all that God is morally, all that He is in His attributes and character, is in the Person of Jesus. So one Person of the Trinity became Man, to set out what God is, and God’s thoughts for man.
In chapter 3 it is mercy and righteousness, and God setting forth Christ, “a mercy-seat”. You do not have the great white throne in chapter 3, no! The great white throne is not presented in Romans. Perhaps you thought you would find it there, but God does not present the great white throne to you in Romans. No, He presents the mercy-seat. What a contrast there is between the mercy-seat and the great white throne! At the great white throne all the dead in hades are there, and there is no hope, no hope! God searches in the books, and He cannot find the names of those that are there. Nobody will be there that will have been raised in the first resurrection. So He will search the books, looking for the names of the persons who stand at the great white throne, but He cannot find them; so “death and hades were cast into the lake of fire”, Rev 20: 14. Romans is not the great white throne, Romans is the mercy-seat. Maybe you came here tonight thinking you will find God judicially; but you will not find Him judicially, you will find Him in mercy, because He has a different throne from what you thought; for the mercy-seat is really His throne. That is how Romans presents God’s majesty and glory. The mercy-seat is His throne, and will be in His moral universe His throne, “whom God has set forth a mercy-seat”. If we had everybody here in this city, that is what we could say still, for God has only one mind for all the sons of men in this city; that is, that they may be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth, because God has a mercy-seat. He has a mercy-seat, and the blood is on the mercy-seat, a witness that His attributes and character and majesty have been upheld in the blood-shedding of Jesus; not one of those attributes surrendered, all upheld and justified, and God is glorified. So His throne in Romans is the mercy-seat, and it is His throne in His moral universe. That is where He sits to exercise His rights, not His rights judicially, but His rights in mercy. How beautiful that is! “Whom God has set forth a mercy-seat, through faith in his blood”, the blood of Jesus; so then you have faith in the Person, and faith in what He has done, because one is for your heart and the other is for your conscience. The answer to your sins is the blood of Jesus, the answer to your heart is the Person of Jesus. You want somebody for your heart, do you not? Because you are not great enough to fill your own heart, although you think you are. But the only one who can fill your heart is God, because He made it. You did not make your own heart; have you ever thought of that? God gave a heart to this wonderful being called man, and God is the only one who can fill it. So the blood is for your conscience, and the Person is for your heart, and there must be faith in both. “Whom God has set forth a mercy-seat, through faith in his blood”, that is how sure your forgiveness is, as sure as the blood is on the mercy-seat.
Is everybody here clear about the forgiveness of their sins?—that God is righteous judicially to forgive your sins, not only governmentally, or administratively, but judicially! The church has rights of administrative forgiveness, but God holds the supreme rights of judicial forgiveness, and He holds them in relation to the mercy-seat. “Through faith in his blood”. Everybody here had sins, because nobody has been born since Adam that has not had sins, not one. Adam and Eve were not born, they were created. They were created in innocence, not in holiness, but in innocence; and they are the only two persons who have ever been in innocence. The Lord was not in innocence, the Lord was in holiness, absolute holiness, “the holy thing also which shall be born shall be called Son of God”, Luke 1: 35. “Through faith in his blood”; the blood is on the mercy-seat, a witness that the rights of God have been upheld judicially in the blood-shedding of Jesus. So there is forgiveness for all. Propitiation is wider than substitution; substitution is not for all, but propitiation is for all, for God has been propitiated in relation to the sins of the whole world. That is how great the work of Jesus is; He has made propitiation for the sins of the whole world. That does not mean to say the whole world is forgiven, because to be forgiven you need to exercise faith, faith in the Person and faith in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is “through faith in his blood”. The blood is on the mercy-seat, and the cherubim are on the mercy-seat, too, those creatures who upheld the rights and attributes of God. There they are looking down, as the guardians in God’s universe of His attributes and rights; they are each side of the lid of the ark, and they look down on the blood that is on the lid of the ark. They glorify God when He forgives a poor sinner because the blood is on the mercy-seat, the witness that God’s rights have been upheld. The rights that you and I outraged have been upheld in the blood of Jesus. So we have forgiveness and righteousness. How beautiful that is! We know that we are forgiven because of faith in the Person and work of Christ. I cannot stress that too much, faith in the Person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. God has set Him forth a mercy-seat, and His forbearance relates to the blood on the mercy-seat; the character of God is in relation to His attributes, and they are never divorced. The death of Jesus has conciliated His attributes and His nature and character. How beautiful forgiveness is! Are you ever going to lose your forgiveness? You cannot lose it. Even if you do not carry it about with you, you cannot lose it, because it does not depend on your faith in that sense, it depends on God’s forgiveness through the blood on the mercy-seat. I never think about my sins, I never wonder where God will bring them up again, because He cannot; He cannot bring up my sins again because the blood on the mercy-seat is a witness that they have been brought up and judicially settled, and God cannot bring them up again.
So I am forgiven, and I am justified; that is Romans 4. It is light, not state; chapter 4 is not state, it is light, light as to justification. That is another step. Forgiveness is one step; justification is another step. You are justified, not because you feel like it; otherwise you would be justified only a very few days in your life. You are not justified because you feel like it; you are justified because Christ is risen. Christ is risen; He “has been delivered for our offences and has been raised again for our justification”. That is the bearing of the resurrection of Christ for the believer. Resurrection in chapter 6 is because the Father entered into the domain of death to raise One out of it that was precious to Him and whom He could not leave there any longer, but chapter 4 is that He is raised for the justification of the believer. As I said, it is not a question of feeling, not a question whether you feel that you are forgiven and justified; that does not enter into it at all, but He has been raised for our justification, which means that I am as clear as Jesus is. That is how I stand here tonight. That is how every believer stands before God. If persons are forgiven and justified, they stand before God as if there never was any charge against them; because Jesus is out of death without the charge that He went into death to settle. He bore the judgment of my sins, He paid the penalty of them, too; what that means I will never know, the awfulness of the judgment of God against my sins. But the sinless and spotless One bore the judgment; He was subjected to the judgment of God; He did what I never could do, for I would be under the judgment of God for ever. But the Lord Jesus went under the judgment of God and exhausted it—yes, exhausted it! He was great enough to exhaust the judgment of God for believers, and He has done it. The witness of it is that He “has been raised for our justification”. Whatever you think about yourself, that is what you are; you are before God without any charge, and you are really ready for God’s world, because, as Mr Raven said, God justifies us, not to live in this world, but in view of God’s world. So that is the light of the gospel.
Young people, get hold of it! Get hold of chapter 3, get hold of chapter 4: because they are steps in the faith of our father Abraham. You are going just the same way as he went, taking just the same steps as he took, in the knowledge of God. What a man Abraham was, and yet he is our father! He took one step, then he took another step, and then he took another step; so we want to be like our father Abraham—just taking one step, then taking another. Be sure you take this step in relation to justification, and remember that the witness of our justification is the resurrection of Jesus, “who has been delivered for our offences and has been raised for our justification”. Without any qualifications, it is an absolute thing; justification is as absolute as forgiveness. I want you to see this, especially you young ones, so that you might get on in your soul, and not keep going round these questions which come up and come back into your mind. Just get through with them, be settled with them, have the light of God in your soul about it, and just be walking as our father Abraham walked. He did not run, but he walked. He ran when the three persons came in Genesis 18; he ran then, but he did not run when it was a question of learning the truth of the gospel; he went step by step.
We have come to the second step now; we are forgiven and we are justified. Is it so with us all? We took one step; now we have taken two steps. Never mind how quickly you take them, because, if you walk, you walk, and you are not sitting down when you are walking. You walk, and it does not matter how quickly you walk, but you walk and you do not run. So as we take one step, and then another step, we are getting on in the gospel. God loves to see us getting on in the gospel; He loves to see us believing in the gospel and believing in His word. He says, ‘I will help you, and I will give you more help, I will be alongside you all the time’, just as He was with Jacob, for that is what He said to him. Jacob need not have made any covenant with God about giving Him a tenth. Before Jacob ever said anything, before he woke up, God said, ‘I will be with you where you go’, not ‘I will be with you if you go where I go’. What a God He is! He commits Himself to us in view of our spiritual prosperity, and has given us a wonderful gospel in order to augment our prosperity in the faith and show us how to walk. He took Israel by the hand and led them out of Egypt. If you find that you have taken a step, you will find that God has taken your hand. His is a firm hand, too, is it not? The hand that manages the affairs of the universe is the hand that takes the believer and says, ‘I am with you as you walk’. That is how Abraham knew Him; that is how God knew Abraham, too, as He led him on.
Now chapter 5 is sunshine. We all like sunshine, as long as it is not too hot; but Romans is not too hot, for it is tempered. God knows how to temper temperature because He is the God of the universe. Romans 5 goes on from Romans 4, because, if you once begin to walk, you keep on walking. God does not mean you to stop, to have a blank day and a blank week and a blank life. No, God says, ‘Keep on walking’; because there is plenty in the gospel and it is a big area. You can keep on walking, and you do not walk over old territory, but you walk in new territory. The gospel is a wonderful area of things where you keep walking, and presently you will find yourself in Ephesians; that is heaven. That is large enough at any rate. You will not be able to go over the same places twice, even though you live for eternity. Now chapter 5 says, “Therefore having been justified on the principle of faith, we have peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ”. It is peace of conscience. Oh, what a rest that is when you have peace of conscience! It means that your conscience is not any more charging you with sin. Why? Because your sins have been forgiven, and you are justified. God laid your sins on your conscience in order to make you feel your need of a Saviour, and to make you feel your need of forgiveness. But now you have peace of conscience; so it adds, “we have also access by faith into this favour in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God”. “This favour in which we stand” is our acceptance in Christ before God. We are getting on. We have reached the forgiveness of sins; we have reached justification; and now we have peace of conscience and are in the area of the favour of God, our acceptance in Another. How do you think that God looks at you because of your faith in the Person and blood of Jesus? He says, ‘I accept you in Another’. What does that mean? Where is the Other? Not in the grave; it is not Jesus in the grave, but Jesus on high, a glorified Man in the presence of God. God says, ‘I accept you in that Person in an absolute way, without any qualifications at all; I accept you in that Man’. Your position is always that, not just when you feel like it, not when your faith is weak or when it is strong, but always. You are always before God in that blessed Man; that is the measure of your acceptance, and, if you live to become a father in the truth and a father in the local assembly, you will never be any more accepted than you are tonight through faith in Christ. It is not in yourself, nor in your state, however good it may be; it is in Another. What an anchor to your soul, when you make mistakes, and when you sin, and when you depart from the truth! Your acceptance is just the same, for God never changes. What you lose is your enjoyment of it, but you do not lose your acceptance. You cannot, because it depends on the death and blood-shedding and resurrection of Christ, and where Christ is always is in the presence of God. How beautiful it is! You “have access by faith into this favour in which we stand”. ‘Oh’, you say, ‘I will go in and see what this place of favour is in which God has put me’. So you come under His shining; He shines on you in His favour, and gives you to know how acceptable you are to Him because He has put you in Another. He has not accepted you on your own merits, but has accepted you on the merits and worth of Another. That is beautiful. That is what Abraham enjoyed, for our father Abraham is in this all right! He got as far as this, and farther, too, for he got into sonship; that is in the gospel: “ye are all God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus”, Gal 3: 26. ‘Oh’, you say, ‘I thought I would need to have a state for sonship’. You have a title for sonship in the gospel, but you get a state for sonship by the Spirit.
So he goes on in this chapter: “have also access by faith into this favour in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God”. ‘Oh’, you say, ‘the world to come is right here now’. It is not historical, nor dispensational; it is right here now, because all the elements of the world to come are in the heart of the believer, all brought in in the gospel. So “we boast in hope of the glory of God”. You say, ‘It will be a time when everybody will be as I am, and all the trouble will be over’. Everybody will then be under God’s rule; the Lord Jesus Christ will bring everything under God’s rule. What a day it will be!
Then you have an establishment of servants. Faith says, “but we also boast in tribulations”—that is one of the servants. “Tribulation works endurance”—there is another one. We have a whole array of servants here waiting on the believer. How well off we are, set up with capital, set up with servants, able to pay them and keep them in our employ! God loves to set us up in nobility, with servants that serve us. What do they serve us for? To make us more rich; not to make us poor because we have run out of money to pay them! No, but God provides us with a lot of servants to make us rich, and they work for our advancement in riches. So “tribulation works endurance; and endurance, experience; and experience, hope; and hope does not make ashamed”. Now you have a hope that does not make you ashamed, “because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us”. We could well go on like this, could we not? The gospel gets richer and richer, because it is God’s gospel; it is God’s gospel about His Son. The righteousness of God is revealed in it; not man’s righteousness, but His own righteousness is revealed in it.
Then we come to this beautiful passage as to the one man Jesus Christ. “For if by the offence of one the many have died”—that is what Adam brought in; his one offence brought all under death. Every one of the human race has inherited from Adam that legacy of sin and death, but God has brought in another Man, another Head; not for the church but for the race. And what has He brought in? “The grace of God, and the free gift in grace, which is by the one man Jesus Christ”; that has “abounded unto the many”.
That is the riches of the gospel, and these are the steps of our father Abraham. God brings him here, and sets him before us, to encourage our hearts in the steps of faith, so that we might grow in our souls in the knowledge of God, grow in the sense of the light of God. In the end of this book the light becomes armour: we “put on the armour of light” (Rom 13: 12), so that we can go out and the darkness does not affect us at all. We are of the day and not of the night, and we have the armour of light to protect us.
May the Lord help us for His Name’s sake!
Brisbane
18th December 1966
From ‘The Word Proclaimed’ 1967,
No 128
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