Faith Through the Unfamiliar (Abraham)

Hebrews
Written By Steve Estes

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Speaker: Steve Estes
Scripture: Hebrews 11:7-10, 13-16
August 27, 2023

Hebrews 11:7-10: By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with fundations, whose architect and builder is God.

Hebrews 11:13-16: All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country — a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

Sermon Outline

1. The life of faith often involves leaving all that’s familiar

  • What Ur was like

  • God’s command to leave Ur

  • Abraham’s faith in unfamiliar Canaan

  • Abraham’s life pictures faith when we leave all that’s familiar

2. The life of faith often means seeing only one step at a time

  • When he left Ur, Abraham did not know his destination

  • Even when Abraham learned the general trajectory, he was detoured

  • Had God’s Word dropped to the ground? No.

  • The life of faith is one step at a time for all believers

3. The life of faith often involves disappointments in how God fulfills His promises

  • Abraham had constant struggles

  • Abraham needed to keep moving

  • Abraham and his family were foreigners in the land

  • For all believers, this life is full of disappointment with how God’s promises are fulfilled

4. The life of faith involves knowing that God’s promises — only dimly fulfilled in this life — will come blazing true in heaven

  • Ur

    • for Abraham

    • for us

  • Canaan

    • for Abraham

    • for us

  • Disappointing Canaan

    • for Abraham

    • for us

Steve Estes

Steve Estes has been senior pastor at Brick Lane Community Church in Elverson, Pennsylvania, for over thirty-five years. 

Steve’s books and other writings began with his longtime friendship with Joni Eareckson Tada. As teenagers, they grappled with why God allowed Joni’s paralysis in a swimming accident in the Chesapeake Bay. Steve left for college . . . they kept in touch . . . she liked the style of his letters. When her 1976 autobiography Joni spawned thousands of reader responses, she asked Steve to join her in crafting a follow-up. The result was A Step Further in 1978.

Later, Wycliffe Bible Translators commissioned Steve to write the biography of former college friend Chet Bitterman, a Wycliffe linguist who was kidnapped and murdered by political terrorists in Colombia in 1981. Other books and articles followed, including When God Weeps (with Joni) and A Better December (a giveaway book for non-Christian friends at Christmas.)

Steve was educated at Westminster Theological Seminary, Columbia Bible College and Jerusalem University College in Israel. He has taught homiletics at Westminster and is a board member of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation.

But Steve would say his most significant life achievement was persuading college classmate Verna Stoltzfus to marry him in 1974.  They now have eight children and more grandchildren than can fit in a van.

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Two Ancient Believers