Abraham’s Faith

When Abraham required a burial place for his wife Sarah, he did not possess even enough of that land for that sad purpose, but had to buy a field for 400 shekels of silver (Gen. 23:15-16). Nearly 2000 years later the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, commented on this strange situation: “By faith (Abraham) sojourned in the land of promise, as in a foreign land… For he looked forward to the city which has foundations whose builder and maker is God” (Heb. 11:9-10). The city for which Abraham looked was not one in the sky, although it would be a heavenly city, but a divinely provided political occupation of the very same land that the Lord had promised him and had covenanted to him and to his descendants.

To me Abraham is the prime example of a man of supreme faith. He fully believed the solemn promises that God had made to him of a land and a people, when the land was occupied by others, when he did not have a child and his wife was barren. It is not given to many men to have a faith such as that. But his faith went even further, for he realized that neither he nor his descendants would have that land during his lifetime. His faith therefore was extended to believe that God could and would raise him, up from the dead.

These divine covenants with Abraham are the basis of the ‘Hope of Israel’ which is the theme that gradually unfolds in the Bible, which takes on a deeper meaning with the advent of Jesus Christ, and which is about to reach its tremendous climax with the second advent of the Messiah, the promised, specific, descendant of Abraham, through whom the whole of the covenant will be completed. Amen.

Bro. Moses Dhlakama (Chipinge, Zimbabwe)