Sermon Tone Analysis

I.    Faith is seeing with spiritual eyes; faith is having the same view of something that God has.

When we come to faith in Jesus, we come because we have been given God’s view of our sinful nature and His view of Christ’s sufficiency to forgive our sin and remove that nature.

Faith is seeing with spiritual eyes the reality of the cross as God sees it.

God has given us a view of the truth, a seeing beyond human seeing about the cross and we are saved eternally when we chose to walk in His view.

When we walk in His view we exercise faith (moving in His seeing.)

A.      Faith is not just belief.

We mix these words up all the time, but they are not the same.

Belief is an intellectual agreement with something.

We may say that we have faith that God knows where our car keys are, but what we really mean is that we believe that He knows all things.

Believing is not faith.

B.      Faith is not hope or expectation.

We may say that we have faith that God will show us where our car keys are; but what we are really saying is that we believe He knows where they are and we hope He will show us.

He may or may not, but that does not change the truth that He knows all things.

C.     Faith is actually seeing what He is seeing in the spiritual realm.

It is not believing in a doctrine or in facts.

It is not placing our hope in Him; it is seeing Jesus as God sees Him and *then* placing our hope in Him because of what we have seen.

It is not believing what someone says; it is seeing truth with the eyes of our heart so our *minds can affirm true things about Jesus*; things we come to believe.

D.     Sometimes we believe in wrong things; things untrue.

Sometimes we hope in things that though they are possible with God; do not materialize for us.

In our relationship with Jesus we certainly believe certain things about Him; and hope for certain things because of Him; but neither of these is faith.

We believe and we hope because of the truth that we have seen with the eyes of our heart.

Our hope and our belief is born out of our seeing the truth about Jesus as God sees it.

E.      Faith is seeing with Spiritual eyes; seeing what God sees and walking in what we see.

F.      Just because we have moved out in faith in the area of salvation; seen what God has seen about our sin and Christ’s sufficiency doesn’t mean for sure that we have see other things that God would like to show us in the spiritual realm.

G.

You might picture your faith at salvation as a view of God thru a paper towel roll; you look thru the roll and what you see is true; you see exactly what God is seeing in some small area and in that seeing you walk wholeheartedly.

1.

But you are still only seeing a small piece of what God sees and wishes to show you.

2.                   I remember as a new believer being very excited about my salvation in Jesus.

3.                   It took quite a while before God enlarged my view and showed me something else that was true; He showed me that the Holy Spirit lives in me and was ready to begin showing Christ’s life out from my life.

a)      I remember where I was standing when this truth came into view.

b)      I had been quite content to be saved and unchanged; saved and quiet among my worldly friends.

c)       But one evening I ‘saw’ God’s plan for my life and His power in my life and I  knew because of what I had seen that my life would change forever, *if* I chose to walk in the reality of what I had seen with the eyes of my heart.

d)      My seeing of God’s view had expanded; now I was no longer looking thru a paper towel roll at God’s truth; I was looking thru a larger view; a PVC pipe.

e)      You might say from being a person of small faith; I had become a person of a little bit bigger faith.

All that was left was for me was to walk in the faith or seeing I had been given.

4.                   Faith is spiritual seeing.

H.      We are going to be following Abraham’s (Abram’s) story for the next few weeks and in his story we have the opportunity to watch God expand Abraham’s faith.

1.                    Abraham’s faith journey is just like ours.

2.                   We will see the successes, the failures and the growing pains.

3.                   God asked no more of Abraham than He asks of us.

God asked Abraham to see what God saw and walk in the reality of that seeing.

That is faith; spiritual seeing.

a)      Sometimes Abraham managed beautiful.

b)      Sometimes he failed miserably.

c)       But I think in Abraham’s story we can really learn about faith and how God wants to expand our view so we see His view of life and so we will move out and walk in what we see.

d)      My guess is that God gives us more ‘seeing’ *only after* we walk in what we are seeing already.

That holds true in the life of Abraham.

e)      If we have a true view of God thru a paper towel roll; and we don’t walk according to what we see thru that roll.

God does not widen our view.

f)   Abraham was a man growing in faith; God continued to widen his view throughout his lifetime.

I.

The story of Abraham is a very important piece of history that we need to understand as a basis for understanding the rest of Genesis, but the story of Abraham is also a very important lesson about faith that should impact our faith journey as well.

II.

The lesson that I hope we will learn in this text is that *God’s view is the view we should want*.

Christians are often heard wishing for, praying for more faith; I think they mean by that that they wish they could have a more encompassing belief or more trust that God will do in their life what they read in the Bible He has done in others.

I say, that is not an increase of faith.

We increase our faith when we become ready to walk in the truth God has already shown us being anxious to see more truth revealed.

We ‘see’ God’s view with the eyes of our heart.

His view is according to His plan and purpose IN HIS SON.

Our hearts desire should be to see what God sees in any situation in the physical world and in the spiritual world and then walk according to that view; walk with that view determining our steps.

A.      The book of Hebrews tells us that Abraham had faith.

Hebrews defines faith as the assurance of things hoped (expected) for the conviction of things unseen.

I call that spiritual seeing leading to a right expectation or hope.

B.      The eyes of Abraham’s heart could definitely could grasp God’s view of things from time to time.

I believe that Abraham could see that God did have a plan for a Savior and that somehow Abraham would play a part in that plan.

C.     Abraham had to see with the eyes of his heart because the promises God made to him simply weren’t visible to the natural eye when they were made.

D.     Abraham had to live and walk in God’s reality - letting God deal with the discrepancy between what was seeable in the natural and what was seen in the spiritual.

E.

Sometimes Abraham walked by faith; sometimes he walked by sight; Genesis shows us both sides of Abraham; Hebrews records just the one.

F.     Today in *Genesis 12-13* we are going to begin our sojourn into Abraham’s life; a life of faith, a life that is a lot like ours.

We will look at three things:

1.                     God’s call

2.                     God’s promise

3.                     God’s patience

G.     We will be talking about faith; seeing things as God sees them.

Hopefully learning the lesson that God’s view is the view we should want.

III.

Let’s look at God’s call on Abram’s life.

A.       God said to Abram;

1.                   Leave your father’s house

2.                   Leave your relatives

3.                   Go forth from your country

B.      God’s plan since the garden has been to come out of the first creation which has been corrupted and come back into relationship with Him.

Come out of the first and into the second.

This is pictured in the call of Abraham as it is in so many other OT stories.

He tells Abram to ‘go forth’ out from his comfortable home and He will invited him to come into a land He will show him.

C.     The three things that God called Abram to forsake were natural sources of security in the Near East; his nationality, his tribe and his family.

He not only had to leave these three things physically, he had to leave them emotionally; disavowing them forever.

This was no more his family, no more his land, no more his country.

In all likelihood when Abram left, he left his family inheritance (he appears to be firstborn in the list of sons of Terah).

D.     It is interesting that this call of God is for Abram to move west.

E.      This call came when Abram was still in Ur, in Mesopotamia 600 miles south of Haran.

By the time Abram is in Haran he is considerably north, up near the Syria, Turkey border and to enter the land he must come down to the South.

FYI, Ab couldn’t have gone straight from Ur to Israel, that trip would have been an impossible trip across the Arabian Desert; man would have naturally traveled north to go east; without an airplane that is.   

1.

As this story plays out, we would have to say that Abram was slow leaving his father’s house, and slow leaving his country and slow in leaving his relatives.

2.                   Abram’s father made the first part of the journey with Abram and appears to have slowed him up a good bit.

It appears some years passed before Abram left Haran for the land of Canaan.

Leaving his father’s house was hard; it took him a while to actually go.

3.

Abram’s nephew Lot made the second part of the journey with Abram, but as we will see Lot caused much trouble and heartache along the way.

He was after all a relative and Abram was to leave his relatives.