Now in Hebrews 11, 8 to 10, By
faith Abraham, when he was called to go
out into a place which he should after
receive for inheritance, obeyed.
And he went out not knowing whether he
went.
By faith he sojourned in the land of
promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in
tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with
him of the same promise.
For he looked for a city which hath
foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
Now I haven't selected this for the morning,
it comes in consecutive order as we're studying
the book of Hebrews these Sunday mornings.
Abraham, when he was called.
And I have been thinking about the critical
moments that are in the life of people.
Naturally the first and most critical moment is
the time of our birth.
For a birth is a promise, or a
warning, or a prophecy, or a portent, or
all of those things.
I was thinking that about 72 or 73
years ago there was a family by the
name of Schickelgruber, quite a long name.
And they'd had some children and then the
midwife came out smiling and said to Mr.
Schickelgruber, you have a son.
And he tried to look pleased, maybe he
was.
But he could hear a little thin wail,
that little wail that's human and yet not
quite like anything human, it's the sound of
a newborn baby crying.
Now if there had been a prophet there
with ability to see the future, I'm sure
that he would have heard in the wail
of that newborn baby a threat to the
human race, I'm sure of it.
I'm sure that he would have recoiled in
horror at what he was hearing, for that
little baby grew up to be Adolf Hitler.
And a little later than that, maybe 20
years later than that, another boy was born
in that same family.
And they said to the waiting father, it's
a boy.
And six million Jews might have recoiled at
that and the whole world shuddered.
For that boy was Adolf Eichmann, who was
personally responsible, so it's charged, and so I
think it has been proved, for the murder
of about six million human beings made in
the image of God, who just a few
days ago was hanged by the neck until
dead for his crime.
And they tried to pay with one dollar.
Now those two births, if we think of
them on the horror side of the ledger,
they were portents and warnings and threats to
the human race.
But I think of another family, a man
by the name of Jesse had quite a
family of boys.
There were eight of them, anywhere from good
-sized boys, half grown up to tiny little
chaps.
And then they came out and said to
Jesse, you've got another boy.
He might have said, what could, they said,
why don't we name him?
They had all the names, he'll be the
last one.
And that was David, the son of Jesse.
And if the prophet had been present there
that day when they brought the little wriggling
pink bitch, trying to work up a cry
when there was nothing to cry over, you
know how they do, and wailing his little
protest to the world.
If there'd been a prophet there who could
foresee this, treat him very, very carefully.
He's going to keep him, handle him carefully
now, because you've got to keep him going
and keep him living, because he's going to
write the 23rd Psalm and out of the
23rd Psalm, hymn after hymn and anthem.
There was a prophecy, this boy's birth.
I say that there are things that are
critical and important predictions, and
birth is one.
And I suppose I couldn't get away from
it, this being the month of June.
What is so rare as the day in
June?
Then have ever come wedding days.
And this is the day, the month when
people marry, why I would never know that
they do.
That is, I mean, why they'd choose this
month, not why they'd marry, I think.
Why they would choose June, but they do.
And that reminds us that getting married is
a long way from being the casual thing
that people make it out to be in
our time.
It's very casual now.
People get married as they might buy a
car or a cottage in the woods, or
go for a trip to Maine.
Just something they'll do, and if they don't
like it, they won't do it.
But under God, and it's odd, isn't it,
that nature has so arranged it that when
two people are doing the most important, neither
one of them can see.
You know, both of them are blind, and
emotionally so groggy that it's impossible for reason
to have any words at all.
And yet it's one of the most important
things in the world.
But to others of you who are looking
forward, I say, don't feed it into it,
and don't.
I know a young fellow, started running around
with a young woman, and everybody began to
say they're going to get married, and he
heard it, and accepted it, and from that
on he got married.
And while he never told me in so
many words, I have every reason to believe
that he never planned it that way at
all.
He was squeezed into it by the pressure
of public opinion.
Don't allow that to happen, and don't allow
merely the desire to get married.
There are lots of worse things than not
being married, and one of them is being
married to the wrong person.
It's a most critical thing.
But I say, birth and marriage and the
choice of a job and lots of other
things, they're very important.
The most vital moment in the life of
any man or woman is when Abraham, when
he was called.
Notice that.
When there is a time factor, a mark,
you put a stake down, and you say
that was the time, Abraham, when he was
called.
Abraham was called, and that was the most
vital moment in his life.
He was nothing compared to most persons.
They come into the world like puppies, they're
born into the world or hatched like birds,
and their education is for life here below.
They're strictly one-worlders.
They believe in this world below, and they're
educated for it, whether they know it or
not, in educating themselves to live with people,
to make a living, in the famous five
points of Spencer.
But it's all for down here.
It's all for this life.
There isn't anything to do with God.
And the idea of God or the thought
of God comes rather remotely, and it sounds
unreal, because they've been educated for the world
below.
And then to some there comes a critical
moment, the call.
The time in this circumstance varies very widely
indeed.
There was Moses, and he was called while
he was out keeping sheep under the brow
of Horeb.
And God said to him, I have heard
the cry.
That was Moses.
That was one set of circumstances.
Then there was another man by the name
of Jacob, and Jacob was in the waste
-howling wilderness, running away from a bad situation
at home, when suddenly he saw a ladder
set up on the earth, and the angels
of God ascending and descending on it, and
God standing above it.
And God spoke to various others.
It doesn't make any difference where you are,
nor quite when it is, whether it's a
holy day or whether it's Monday morning to
some people.
Maybe not to all, but to some people.
The call of God is for everybody, but
not everybody hears it.
The scripture asserts this very clearly, that most
persons, they know it in a way, but
it never becomes an incident.
And that is true of most Christians.
It is never anything that takes place.
It is something they know vaguely, but that's
about it.
Then comes that one clear call, and they
do hear it then.
If it's to that, that man does hear
it.
Many live and die and never hear it,
but some do hear it.
Abraham heard it.
If there was no other reason why you
ought to get still and wait once in
a while, it is maybe God's been trying
to get you when your line's busy.
Maybe God's been trying to reach you and
can't because you've been preoccupied.
This American idea that has certainly come over
to Canada too, that the go-getter is
your man.
The go-getter, the man who never to
be still.
He's your man.
He's your man who will turn the world
over.
An old Quaker lady, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was
boasting to her in a good-natured way,
how he'll live.
He said, when I get up in the
morning, while I am memorizing Greek, while I
am shaving, I am memorizing something else.
And while I'm at breakfast, then he has
something else he was doing.
And she listened unimpressed.
And it's necessary sometimes that we stop and
think.
Some of the most useful things you can
do is to do nothing at all for
a little bit.
Sometimes you can go the fastest by not
going at all.
And you can go the farthest by standing
still.
And you can talk the loudest by not
saying a word.
Abraham was down in Ur the Chaldees, and
tradition says he was an idol-maker in
the home of his father.
Of course, he knew not Jehovah, the God
that we say now, the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob.
He was not yet the God of Abraham,
but he was listening.
He was hearing.
Some busy people cannot hear.
I know people that are so socially minded
that they will be in misery if they
are by themselves.
One young fellow said to his father, a
doctor.
He was in the hospital, this young chap.
He said, Dad, bring me a record player.
Something, he said.
If I don't, because he lived the kind
of life he had lived, it was hell
to think that Abraham didn't find it hell.
I don't know how much Abraham had to
do with all this.
We will allow the Calvinists and Arminians to
argue this all out.
I believe that God is always previous, and
I believe in prevenient grace, and I believe
that if God hadn't moved toward Abraham, Abraham
never would have moved toward God.
I believe that.
But I also believe that if Abraham had
not had his ear cocked to another world
than this, he would never have heard the
voice of Abraham when he was called.
What a critical moment that was in the
life of Abraham!
If Abraham had set his jaw and said,
I'm not going to fool with this religion
business, and had gone back making bigger and
better idols, the whole history of the world
would have been a different market, and different
for the worse.
It says here that Abraham was called, that
one, and he was called to go out.
Now, Abraham was negative.
Abraham was called to go out.
He was called to go out.
Is that so?
There he was, but the place where he
was wasn't the right place.
He was in Ur making idols, and that
wasn't the right place for him.
Eternal God had something better for him, so
he called him out.
Ur was not God's place for Abraham.
In order to become a friend of God,
he had to go out.
Now, there is the offense of the cross.
Nobody cares how religious you are, particularly in
this present moment, in this what they call
the intellectual ferment that's going on now.
As a boy on the farm, I know
what happens when things ferment, and I'm a
little worried about that expression.
But this moment we're in now, this cross,
it's quite respectable now to be religious, though
I well remember not too long ago, after
the First World War, when it was highly
unrespectable to be a believer in God.
Now, at last, we have made terms with
religion, and the world says it's all right
to believe, provided you don't believe anything very
much, and provided what you believe doesn't change
you very much, and again, provided what you
believe doesn't reflect unkindly upon somebody that doesn't
believe.
Catholics, Jews, Gentiles, atheists, unbelievers can all get
together on a panel discussion with the idea
that each is expressing his viewpoint, and then
shake hands and go out and have a
soda.
Nothing matters much anyhow.
Whether Jews are right, or the Catholic and
the Pope are right, or whether the Protestant
gospel groups are right, or whether the atheist
is right, that's nothing to worry about.
The point is, we've fermented.
We have had the dialogue, we have aired
our beliefs like budgies in a cage, talking
to each other but not knowing what we're
saying.
So, Christianity is all right, provided you don't
let it become exclusive.
Christianity is perfectly all right, just so long
as you don't say, this is the only
religion there is, and Christ is the only
hope there is, and through Christ alone men
reach God.
As soon as you say that, you're dead.
They say, he's a dogmatist, take him out.
They'll have nothing to do with the fellow
after that, because he dares to believe not
that there are several ways to heaven, but
one way.
And one thing the call of Christ does
to us, one thing the call of Christ
does is to call us out.
Abraham, when he was called, he was called
to go out.
So he was called to go out, because
where he was wasn't the right place.
I'll tell you this again, I told you
this a couple of years ago now, but
I want to repeat it.
Some of you know the Irish evangelist who
has just now gone to heaven, maybe less
than a year ago, by the name of
Billy Nicholson.
Now, I personally knew Billy Nicholson, he was
one of my good, warm friends.
But he was a great man, he was
one of the greatest evangelists of his day.
Saved Ireland, they tell us, from one people
to God by the other.
Well, he was called to go to a
certain church.
Now, I'm not going to mention the name
of that church, if I can help it,
but if it slips in, I won't be
too sure.
They called him in and they said, we'd
like to have you put on an evangelistic
service here.
He said he'd be glad to do it.
Well, the pastor after he got there, one
thing about it, Mr. Nicholson, he said, we
live in this town, it's a liquor town.
And he said, some of my people are,
he said, in fact, the chairman of the
board of the church.
And he's also the town undertaker.
And he said, I'd just like not to
say anything about liquor.
Well, that first night the brother got up,
Billy Nicholson got up and preached on John
3.16. He didn't mention anything, only the
love of God.
And the pastor said, well, won't this be
wonderful?
We'll get all of evangelism, evangelistic men up
to the edge of the platform.
And he said, ladies and gentlemen, I understand
that you have a man on the board
of your church who makes liquor to damn
people's souls.
And he said, also, he's an undertaker so
that he can bury them when they die
and go to hell.
And then he let in from there on.
That was Billy.
They closed the church on him and locked
the door.
Billy never got another chance at that church.
He told me that was the only time
he'd ever been locked out.
Well, you see, if Billy had just allowed
them to drop in their liquor, if he
had just allowed them to stew in their
gin, they'd never have
done that.
But that was Billy Nicholson.
And as
soon as they went back to not being
and don't make it mean much, nobody will
bother us.
But as soon as we've been preached at
the call, they'll get on us right away.
But Abraham was called to go out.
But I want you to notice another thing,
too.
Another preposition lies alongside of that one.
He was called to go out into.
Here's the difficulty in some churches.
They're always against something and never for anything.
The only reason I'm ever against it, I
am for something, and that makes it necessary.
So Abraham was against idol making in order
that he might be on the side of
God.
God called him to go out into, said,
Abraham, come and I will show thee the
land.
So the call of God is always into.
Keep that in mind.
God calls you into what?
He calls you into eternal life.
He calls you into holiness of living.
He calls you into fellowship with his son.
He calls you into a life of fruitfulness
and usefulness.
He calls you into purity of the heart.
He calls you to walk within as Enoch
walked with him.
He calls you into.
And he calls you into the sweetest fellowship
in all the world, the fellowship of Christians.
He calls you into something, but in order
to do it, he has to call you
out of where you are, because where you
are isn't the right place.
You were born on the right.
And then remember, too, that what he calls
you away from isn't anything compared to what
he calls you into.
Lecture 11 Justification and Sanctification 22 I get
a lot of sour amusement out of these
half-converted opera stars and half-converted singers
who tell about how they nobly gave up
at the altar.
Beating the bench with tears, they gave up
an opera career.
They couldn't sweep off the stage.
But they gave up an opera career to
follow the Lord, and to give the impression
that the Lord should reward them particularly because
of what they gave up.
Well, granted, now, granted they gave something up.
I've never met one yet that gave up
anything.
Always they couldn't quite make good.
A fellow that can't sing a lick well
enough to sing an opera can always manage
to stagger by in churches.
And the man who is unable to toot
a horn, they wouldn't have him even in
jazz orchestra.
He can talk to the Young People's Society
and get a reputation and be called around.
He says, I gave up.
You know what you gave up, Junior, God
bless you?
You didn't give up anything.
God called you to himself.
What did I give up when I got
converted?
I gave up the rubber factory.
I was working making tires in a rubber
factory, and I gave that up.
I was scared half to death, and I
gave that up.
I was miserable and gave that up.
I was covered with sin and I gave
that up.
I had ambitions to do so many things,
none of which I ever would have accomplished,
and I gave that up.
But what did I get called into?
Well, I gave up certain friends, I admit
that.
I gave up certain friends.
Now, I didn't have the experience in order
that I might be a Christian, because I
met my wife in the basement of a
Methodist church, and I hadn't had any girlfriends
before that, so that was out.
But I didn't give up anything that was
worthwhile, but what I got was everything.
If God takes away from you an old
beat-up dollar bill and hands you back
the mint, and says, here, the mint's yours,
help yourself, God called Abraham out from making
idols.
If Abraham had ever thought to grumble about
it, God would lay him go back and
make idols.
But God called him out and said, kings
are in your loins, you will be the
father of the Messiah.
Down the long line from Abraham on down
to Mary, you will be in line for
the Messiah.
Now, the blessing that came to him because
he got out.
Now, that's the only reason I tell people
that they ought to get out from the
world, in order that they might get in.
You know, the Puritans, they used to say
about them, I don't think it was true
at all, but they used to say about
the Puritans that they opposed bear baiting.
And they said they didn't oppose bear baiting
because they pitied the bear, but they opposed
bear baiting because they didn't want the people
to have any fun baiting bears.
I believe that that is a scurrilous remark
and don't believe it's true.
But I have met people who, I'm afraid,
were just a little bit on that bear
baiting side of things.
They were always against it.
I got a letter and now I've got
a bunch of books.
I'm going up to Minnesota in between Sundays,
and of all things I'm going to preach
on the baptism of the Holy Ghost.
And who do you suppose I'm preaching it
to?
A bunch of Lutherans.
They invited me to come and was taking
me to task, warning me and telling me
not to go near those Lutherans.
I said, don't you do it.
They're not Orthodox.
I can't help it.
Imagine, will you, if you were to call
up a doctor and say, don't go near
that man, he's sick.
Don't go near him, he's sick.
Of course, that's why the doctor goes.
I'm saying to a schoolteacher, don't you go
near that little boy.
He can't read.
We should go there to teach him to
read.
And so my good Lutheran friends, I hadn't
ever met them.
I know one fellow among them.
Outside of that, I know nobody.
But I'm going up there and preach a
series of sermons on the Holy Ghost.
I preached here at Avenue Road Church.
This man that wrote me, he warned me.
He said, don't you know they're using you?
He said, they're going to use you.
I don't know how they can use me.
I've never been used yet.
And I'm too old to start now.
But I'm going to preach on God, the
Holy Ghost, and what he can do in
the lives of men that let him.
And I'm going to tell them what God
calls them into.
And I say, come out, come out, in
order that you might get in.
Now, Abraham obeyed, and I'm finished.
Abraham obeyed.
By faith, Abraham obeyed.
Faith gave him the grand courage to go
out, to leave all the old safe mess,
his pension, and his seniority, and that comfortable
chair, and the change, and the loss, and
the human uncertainty that came to him.
He became a pilgrim now, to wait and
to look upon God.
Lost his Social Security, lost his friends at
his age.
At his age, every piece of furniture in
the house fit him.
You know, if you sit in a long
enough, they come to fit you.
Everything fit him around there.
Everything was comfortable.
You know, just where to sit and when,
and everybody knew what Abraham would do.
God said, I want you to get out
of this whole comfortable place and follow me.
Abraham had good spiritual sense enough to obey
God.
He got up and went.
He went because the scripture says, and says
it so much more beautifully than I have
said it.
It says, because he regarded the city, because
he looked for a city which hath foundations,
whose builder and maker is God.
He never did quite believe in the permanency
of the city where he lived.
Err.
He never quite believed in the permanency of
that home of his.
Never.
Never quite believed in the permanency of the
job of making idols.
Something in his heart, placed there by God,
disturbed him and made him discontented and troubled.
And when God said, Abraham, come out, he
went immediately and followed God.
As Bud Robison said, Abraham went out not
knowing where he was going, but he knew
who was going with him.
And that's all you have to know.
He looked for a city.
He was interested in something that has permanence,
whose builder and maker is God.
That's life's summum bonum.
The end after which the human race strives
and doesn't know it.
Jerusalem, wrote the old monk, Jerusalem the golden,
with milk and honey blessed, beneath thy contemplation
sink heart and voice oppressed.
I know not, oh I know not, what
social joys are there, what radiancy of glory,
what wealth beyond compare.
Abraham saw that way back there.
Jesus said, Abraham saw my day and was
glad.
He looked at the city and he left
his little town.
And he went out with no town, nothing
but a tent, because he was seeing a
city.
And as he went, he might have said,
for thee, oh dear, dear country, mine eyes
their vigils keep.
For very love beholding thy happy name they
weep.
The mention of thy glory is unkind to
the breast, and medicine, and sickness, and love.
He dedicated himself to eternal things, and I
don't have to make a case for it.
The long, glory-studded history of Abraham is
its own justification.
God bless the man who heard a voice,
who obeyed it, who went out and in,
in obedience to a heavenly call.
God make us like Abraham, at least in
this.
Amen.