Hebrews 11:9a
"By faith (by taking God at His Word) he (Abraham) sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country,…"
And indeed it was. It was foreign territory to a Syrian down there in the Euphrates. The Canaanites were dwelling in the land. We’re going to be looking at the difference between the Canaanites and the Arabs. There is a big difference. The Canaanites were not Arabs. And so the Canaanites were in the land of promise and it was amongst the Canaanites that Abram or to be later Abraham and Sarah and then later on Isaac and Jacob....so forth - it was among the Canaanites that they sojourned. It was while as yet unseen sons and grandsons of Abraham, as they were still but the seed in his loins, when he first transversed todays Palestine and then went into Egypt, that the time clock started for the soon to come nation, traveled.
I think I pointed out, What did Abraham have to do as he moved across that country with his flocks and herds? Well, he would have to ask permission. "Can I run my flocks through your orchard, grizing lands...etc.?" And he would probably guarantee that they wouldn’t harm anything that was productive. "But, can we just have the grass?" Because he was a foreigner. He was a sojourner in a foreign land. Even though it was the land that God had promised to him. So you’ve got to keep all these things in your mind as you read about these things. But even Abraham saw that the physical lands were not what was ahead of him as Paul tells us here in Hebrews and elsewhere.
Hebrews 11:9b
"…dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:"
All right, so he "sojourned in a strange land" he was a pilgram, a gyptcy, only because he knew he could trust the God who told him to leave Ur. How do we come to trust some one? By way of getting to know them. Are they trust worthy or not, do they do what they've promised or do they just skip on down the road and forget it? Now, just to show you what patience that took to maintain that kind of faith, I can’t pinpoint it in Scripture so I’ll again just have to simply say, it’s my own personal feeling, that Abram was probably 40-50 years old when God first spoke to him in Ur of the Chaldees. Now, I think all of you know - how old was he when the promised son was born, that is Isaac? One hundred! So how many years did this man live day in and day out by trusting God faithfulness, waiting for the birth of that son? At least Fifty years.
Today we’re living in a time of instant gratification. I want it NOW! But Abraham waited fifty years before he finally got the son of promise, Isaac. So this is why he is such an example of faith and patience and integrity, that he was willing to just know that someday God is going to come through. He’s faithful. No, he like us had to have known more than is given to us. So, "he sojourned in the land, dwelling in tabernacles." Now what’s the other word for tabernacle? Tents. Well, what was the purpose? He couldn’t build a home of stone and concrete because he was just simply sojourning up and down the land, waiting for or looking for the city, a city not made by mans hands. But until it did appear, he was living in tents that were temporary abodes that could be taken up and moved. Much the same as God expects of us as we learn of Him with whom we have to do. We're to be as the wind that moves to trees but has NO one place as of yet to settle or call our home. We should feel uneasy or unsettled while we are alive on this earth as it is not our true home but is rather a place of like Abraham our sojourning.
"He was dwelling in tents with Isaac, and all the way on up into time of Jacob." Nothing is concrete yet so far as the promises are concerned. But they were all "heirs with him of the same promise." Now we’ve got to go back, don’t we? Let’s go back briefly to the Abrahamic Covenant itself. I’m not going to go into it in detail, but back in Genesis chapter 12, the Abrahamic Covenant. We’ve made the statement over and over. If you can’t understand the Abrahamic Covenant, then this Book is a dilemma. You can’t figure it out until you understand how all of this promises of a Messiah and how He to came about.
All right, Genesis chapter 12. I have to make reference that the very first promise of a coming Messiah was right after Adam and Eve fell and is recorded in Genesis 3:15 - where we have the promise of the coming of the "seed of the woman." But, for those first 2,000 years it just sort of laid there dormant. There was just nothing transpiring to get that seed growing. Even though God was talking to men such as Enoch, Methuselah and Noah. It was there, because Abraham comes out of one of the three sons of Noah, remember Shem? And God was in control of all that. But beginning with Abraham 2,000 years after Adam, 2,000 years before Christ, things are now going to start moving. Now here is the Abrahamic Covenant.
Genesis 12:1
"Now the LORD had said unto Abram, (in chapter 11) Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will (sometime in the future) shew thee:"
See He doesn’t tell him here, for example, I’m going to send you up to the Mediterranean. He doesn’t tell him I’m going to send you up to the land of the Canaanites. No. He just says, "Leave Ur and go to a land that I will show you." Well now, this is all means of testing the man’s trust. Now here comes the promises, verse 2.
Genesis 12:2-3a
"And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee:…"
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