Lesson 23 – Abraham
Read Hebrews 11 - www.bible.com/bible/59/heb.11.esv

Our lesson about faith today is about Abraham. We can read Abraham’s story in Genesis chapters 12 through 25. There are many lessons of faith we can learn from this man, as we can see from the book of Romans. But there are two times in Abraham’s life that are given in this chapter of Hebrews to teach us about our faith in God.

The first is the very first time God is said to have spoken to Abraham. He was living in what was then the center of commerce for the world. He was a trader, and therefore everything he and his family had worked for was located in this city. But God told him to get up and move. God said he was to leave his family behind and take only his wife and move to a place He would show him. Abraham followed his father and the rest of the family back to their homeland, but he stayed with his family until his father died.


That was when God called him again and asked him to leave everyone behind except his wife, and get on the road so God could show him where He wanted him to go. Once again Abraham obeyed, but not in every detail – he brought along his nephew, Lot.

Do we ever obey God, just not all the way? As you read Abraham’s story, you will find that Lot caused Abraham a lot of grief over the years, and over the centuries God’s people had trouble with the descendants of Lot too.

But in the second story of Abraham’s faith we find a different man. He was now committed to obeying God all the way, no matter what it would seem to cost him. Just a few years before this God had promised Abraham a son, and Abraham believed God. It is this believing in God’s promise that became the turning point in his life – this was the believing that is said in Romans to be the moment when Abraham was saved by faith. But now a few years have passed, and this beloved son of God’s promise, Isaac, has become very important to Abraham.

God, however, asked Abraham to do the unthinkable – to sacrifice Isaac on an altar, to kill him with his own knife and burn him as a sacrifice to God. Could you or I do that if God asked it of us? Abraham set out to do exactly as God had asked. Even when Isaac asked what they were doing, Abraham’s heart, though probably shredded in misery, set purposefully toward doing as God had asked. He believed without a single doubt that God would raise Isaac from the dead and restore him – because this was the son of God’s promise.

 Sometimes God asks us to give up things or situations that we believe we cannot possibly give up. Yet, if God has asked it, should we hesitate to obey? If God has given it, can He not also either restore it or give us something better?