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Topic:Faith That Anticipates and Acts
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
Hebrews 11:8-10
Faith believes that God has revealed something about the future; not everything, but something. And what he has revealed is quite enough for us to know. Faith seizes upon a revealed event and begins to live in anticipation of it. Therefore, faith gives our life a goal, a purpose and a destination. It is a look into the future.
We see this in Abraham. He is an illustration of the meaninglessness of time in the life of faith. It is amazing how far Abraham saw. Abraham lived about two thousand years before Christ. We live about two thousand years after him. Yet Abraham, looking forward by faith, believing what God had said would take place, looked across forty centuries of time and beyond to the day when God would bring to pass on earth a city with eternal foundations. Abraham saw what John sees in the book of Revelation, a city coming down out of heaven onto earth. That is a symbol of that for which we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” (Matthew 6:10). That is what Abraham longed for, an earth run after God’s order, where people dwell together in peace, harmony, blessing, beauty and fulfillment. Because of that he was content to dwell in tents, looking for that coming.
You can see this quality of anticipation also in Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. Isaac and Jacob both knew that God intended to make nations from their sons, and their final prayers were based upon that fact. They prayed in anticipation of what God had said would come, and blessed their children on that basis. Joseph, when he was dying, saw four hundred years ahead to the coming exodus from Egypt, and he arranged by faith for a funeral service in the promised land. He did not want to be buried in Egypt. Thus he symbolized his conviction that God was going to do exactly what he had said. And eventually it happened exactly that way.
You can see how faith anticipates in the case of Moses’ parents who, when he was born, saw that he was “beautiful in God’s sight” ( Acts 7:20-21 ) and they acted by faith to save him from the edict of the king that all male children should be slain ( Exodus 1:16,22 ). This was more than the natural desire of parents to preserve their children from death. But these parents knew there was a promise of deliverance from Egypt for their people, and they knew that the time was near. God had foretold how long it would be. They were given assurance that this boy had been singled out by God, they trusted God’s word and, acting on that, they defied the king and hid the child for three months ( Hebrews 11:23 ).
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Related to this quality of faith which accepts as certain a promise of the future is a second quality, that faith always acts. There is today a very common misconception that thinks of men and women of faith as so occupied with the future that they sit around, twiddling their thumbs, doing nothing. We have all heard of those who are “so heavenly-minded that they are of no earthly good.” That is the common concept of faith. But that is not faith; that is fatalism! Faith works! Faith is doing something now, in view of the future. If you are folding your hands and waiting for the Second Coming you are not living the life of faith. The life of faith is that which acts now in view of that coming event.
Thank you, Lord, for the opportunities you give to anticipate and act upon what you have promised. Teach me to see that city from above which one day will come down.
Life Application
Is our faith rooted in Biblical revelation which produces our life expectancies, purpose and destination? Are our prayers and actions guided consistently by that purposeful faith?
