Abraham's Test - Part 2

by Dr. Ken Matto

(Heb 11:9 KJV) 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:

We began a series on the 4 faith tests of Abraham and in part one we saw that Abraham was called out of Ur of the Chaldees and was not told at that point where he was to sojourn to. He was literally following the Lord into an unknown. The second faith test of Abraham we find in this chapter is found in our verse above. The second test was “delay.” Abraham was called out to go into a certain place but there was a time delay before God was going to fulfill the promise. Abraham dwelled in the land in tabernacles, in other words, he had no specific place to set down his roots until God was ready to fulfill the promise of giving him an heir to all the promises. Abraham was basically leading a life of wandering without having any permanent possessions. Abraham’s wandering in the above verse shows us that he dwelled in a strange land. He went with God into the unknown and now he had to wait until God’s timing was full when the promises were to be fulfilled through his lineage. Of course, the Lord Jesus came through the lineage of Abraham which really meant there was about a 2,000 year time period between the promise of God and the fulfillment of the promise.

Now when we speak of delay, are we speaking of the fact that God promises something and He is late or that we just refuse to accept God’s timing for events in our life. Many times we want God to be on our schedule and we do not realize that God knows something more about the situation we are in than we do. Remember when Lazarus was sick and the Lord Jesus delayed His coming to Lazarus? Jesus knew exactly what He was going to do and He knew the exact timing of that event. Everyone in the household of Lazarus was looking for Jesus to come and heal him. In fact, Jesus did not have to be physically present to heal, He just had to speak the Word and it would have been done. Mary and Martha were looking at only what they thought would have been the best solution to the situation. They were looking for a healing. (Eph 3:20 KJV) Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,

Based on the Ephesians verse, we see that God works above what our finite minds ask or think. Unfortunately, because we are still in sinful bodies, we tend to limit God according to the limitations of the physical body. No one in that house had any clue as to what the Lord Jesus had in mind when He went to the tomb of Lazarus. One of the problems in our own life is that we tend to truncate the blessings of God by lowering Him to only what we can do or think. We need to trust God, especially during those time of great delays in our life. I just passed my 15 month of unemployment and my prayer is that I stay spiritually attuned to what the Lord is doing in my life. This is the attitude we must all possess because God is always doing something in the lives of His children. He is never toying with us nor is He trying to destroy us. He has redeemed us and has invested much in every believer. Sometimes God delays things to prune us, test us, or bring us back into fellowship from some type of sin. We must never feel that God has abandoned us or left us out to dry and does not care about us. Remember the following verse. (Isa 55:8 KJV) For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. It applies to believers as well as unbelievers. Let us keep that in mind the next time we hit a “seeming” delay in our life

(3/21/03)