Isaiah 51:2-3

Look unto Abraham your father

Abraham, or the Christian’s rock

I. THE DEALINGS OF GOD WITH ABRAHAM.

1. God “called him alone.” How merciful this call! Our own call to renounce this world, and to seek a better, even a heavenly country, is to be traced, like Abraham’s, to the undeserved mercy of our heavenly Father.

2. The Lord “blessed” Abraham. And has He not “blessed” us? Has He not given to us many of the blessings of this life? And, what is much more than these, has He not redeemed us from sin and misery by Jesus Christ our Lord?

3. The Lord “increased” him. The worldly possessions of Abraham were many. But Abraham was increased further in his posterity. But his spiritual descendants are yet more numerous. So likewise is the faithful Christian, the spiritual child of Abraham, “increased;” not indeed, it may be, in this world’s riches and honours, but in spiritual wealth and dignity.

II. THE CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF ABRAHAM.

1. His faith. Let us look to Abraham as an example in this point of view.

2. His obedience. Let no one whose works contradict his profession of faith suppose himself to be a believer in God. (W.D. Johnston, M.A.)

Sarah

That Sarah is mentioned chiefly for rhythmical effect may be inferred from the writer s now confining what he says to Abraham alone. (J.A. Alexander.)

Hearken and look; or, encouragement for believers

The second verse contains my actual text. It is the argument by which faith is led to look for the blessings promised in the third verse. It is habitual with some persons to spy out the dark side of every question or fact: they fix their eyes upon the “waste places,” and they study them till they know every ruin, and are familiar with the dragons and the owls. They sigh most dolorously that the former times were better than these, and that we have fallen upon most degenerate days. The habit of looking continually towards the widernesses is injurious because it greatly discourages; and anything that discourages an earnest worker is a serious, leakage for his strength. My text has near to it three times, “Hearken to Me. You have listened long enough to dreary suggestions from within, to gloomy prophecies from desponding friends, to the taunts of foes, and to the horrible whisperings of Satan: now hearken to Him who promises to make the wilderness like Eden, and the desert like the garden of the Lord. O ye whose eyes are quick to discover evil, there are other sights in the world besides waste places and deserts, and hence my text hath near to it twice over the exhortation, “Look”--“Look unto the rock whence ye, are hewn;” “Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you; for there we may find comfort.

I. We shall first look towards Abraham that we may see in him THE ORIGINAL OF GOD’S ANCIENT PEOPLE.

1. The founder of God’s first people was called out of a heathen family. Abraham, the founder of the great system in which God was pleased to reveal Himself for so long a time, and to whose seed the oracles of God were committed, was a dweller in Ur of the Chaldees, the city of the moon-god. We cannot tell to what extent he was actually engrossed in the superstition of his fathers, but it is certain that the family was years afterwards tainted with idolatry; for in Jacob’s day the teraph was still venerated, and Rachel stole her father’s images. Abraham, therefore, was called out from the place of his birth, and from the household to which he belonged, that in a separated condition, as a worshipper of the one God, he might keep the truth alive in the world. Why, then, might not the Lord, if the cause of truth were this day reduced to its utmost extremity, again raise up a Church out of one man? “Ah,” you say, “but men are not called now, as Abraham was, by miraculous calls from heaven.” Where ordinary means are so plentiful wisdom resorts not to signs and wonders. The same Spirit who called Abraham by a supernatural voice can call others by the word of truth. “Ah,” say you, “but Abraham was naturally a man of noble mould.

Where do you find such a princely spirit as his?” I answer, Who made him? He that made him can make another like him.

2. Look again, and observe that Abraham was but one man. If we should ever be reduced, as we shall not be, to one man, yet by one man will God preserve His Church, and work out His great purposes. Think of the power for good or evil which may be enshrined in a single human life.

3. This one man was a lone man. He had no prestige of parentage, rank or title. The fulfilment of his calling rested on his loneliness; for he must get away from his kindred, and wander up and down with his flocks, even as the Church of God now does, dwelling in a strange land, and feeding her flock apart. “I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.” If in the town or district where you live you seem to lose all your helpers; if they die one by one, and it seems as if nobody would be left to you, still persevere, for it is the lone man that God will bless.

4. He was a man who had to be stripped yet further. He must come away from his kindred and his father’s house, and must dwell in Palestine till the promised seed was born. But how long he waited for the expected heir! What a feast there was that Isaac was born, filling the house with laughter. But he must die! The grand old man is sure that even if he should actually slay his son at God’s command the promise would somehow be kept. Look, then, to Abraham your father, and say is he not the grandest human representative of the great Father God Himself, who in the fulness of time spared not His own Son, but freely delivered Him up for us all? If in all these trials Abraham was yet blessed, and God s purposes were accomplished in him, can we not believe that the same God can work by us also, despite our downcastings and humiliations! Here is the sum and substance of this first head of my discourse: in looking to the rock whence we are hewn, we have to see the Lord working the greatest results from apparently inadequate causes. This teaches us to cease from calculating means, possibilities and probabilities, for we have to deal with God, with whom all things are possible.

II. THE MAIN CHARACTERISTIC OF THIS CHOSEN MAN. The text says, “Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you,” and it must mean--consider him and see what he was, that you may learn from him. His grand characteristic was his faith. Abraham’s faith was such that it led him to obedience. The man of faith is God’s man. Why? Because faith is the only faculty of our spirit which can grasp God’s ideal. Faith, too, has a great power of reception, and therein lies much of her adaptation to the Divine purpose. Then, again, faith always uses the strength that God gives her. Faith, too, can wait the Lord s time and place. God loveth faith and blesseth it, because it giveth Him all the glory.

III. OUR RELATIONSHIP TO THAT ONE MAN. “Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.” Something, surely, is expected of the children of such a man as Abraham. Because we are the seed of Abraham, the apostle declares that the blessing of Abraham has come upon us also.” What is it? It is a covenant favour that belongs to all who are the servants of God by faith. Here is the substance of it: “Surely blessing, I will bless thee, and in multiplying, I will multiply thee.” The blessing is attended with multiplying. The blessing of the Church is the increase of the Church. The success of truth is the battle of the Lord, and the increase of His Church is according to HIS own promise; therefore in quietness we may possess our souls.

IV. OUR POSITION BEFORE ABRAHAM’S GOD. “Look to Abraham, but only as to the rook from which the Lord quarried His people:” your main thought must be Jehovah Himself. “I, I called him alone, and blessed him.” Let us joyfully recollect that the Lord our God has not changed, nay, not in one jot or tittle. “His arm is not shortened that He cannot save,” etc. The covenant of God has not changed. Read the covenant words, “In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven,” etc. But there is this also to be added, that this work which we desire the Lord to do is in some respects even less than that which He has done with Abraham. What ask we? Not that He should begin with one man to build up a nation, or create a Church? No, but that Zion being builded, He should comfort her, and cause her waste places to rejoice. What marvellous things hath God done on the face of the earth sines Abraham’s days!--the stupendous marvel of incarnation; the wondrous work of redemption, the highest, grandest, Divinest achievement of the Deity--all this is done; what may we not expect after this? You know more of God than Abraham could know. Trust Him, at least up to the level of the patriarch. How shall we forge an excuse if we do not? (C. H. Spurgeon.)