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this morning as we contemplate your word that your word be injected into our
hearts and to uh make its presence felt in our being and to transform our souls
that we find sweeter fellowship with you, bolder endeavors for you for the glory of your kingdom. For we ask for
Jesus' sake. Amen. This morning we're going to be dealing with um Abraham again. Um title of the
sermon is real confidence and the blazing torch. Um, we have Abraham.
We're going through a series. It's called the Gospel of Abraham where we're talking about this man who is basically
the paradigm of faith. If you're talking about faith, there's nobody else to look to than for an example uh as Abraham. He
is the father of three different religions, Christianity, Judaism, and
Islam. So there's no other authority in the history of mankind when you look at
in terms of faith uh as important as Abraham. So he's called the father of
faith. And we're going to examine the nature of faith. What what really is
faith? What is this when talking about Christian faith? What does it mean to believe in God? What does it mean to
trust in God? Uh it uh um so we're going to look through the life of this man.
How it looks like? What it tastes like? So, and this morning we're going to come to a part of his life where Abraham
experienced doubt and fear and basically three points in the sermon. True faith
has room for doubt. Doubt must always be resolved. And third thing is real confidence is based on the blazing
torch. Uh so you can follow this uh with your notes in front of you. Uh the first
thing I want to basically put forward out to us this morning is the fact that true faith has room for doubt. After
these things, the word of the Lord uh came to Abraham in a vision. Fear not Abraham, I am your shield for your
reward shall be very great. Uh after these things uh basically refers to his
battles which he had. I'll describe to you in a minute. And the main thing is that God comes to Abraham and tells him
to fear not. He has fear. He has fear. He has doubt. Uh and that's something
very relevant. and and we're wondering how come a man who has been promised all these things, who's supposed to be full
of faith, has doubt, has fear. Uh and and so to me, I find it very comforting
the fact that he has these issues which he struggle with, which I struggle with
all the time. Uh so there's fear and what why is he fearful? Because he's
just gone through a traumatic battle where we've got four kings defeated, five kings uh in his area. his nephew,
Lord, was taken prisoner and um as for ransom and he had to charge forward to
fight the the coalition of kings and with how many men? Four 318 men. 318 men
looking like dwarfs and they go and and ride into the valley of shadow or death and they defeat a
coalition of kings, multiple kings and kingdoms. Right. Just the Bible very clear. It's not 300 men. It's 318, you
know. Exactly. So that's not a lot of people to to to fight. That's like, you know, a couple of bad platoon, you know,
going in to fight. He managed to defeat them. He's uh victorious. But the trouble is when you're victorious,
people want to take revenge. And now you're on people's radar screen. This
fellow, he chased them all the way up to Damascus. He's on their radar screen. they're going to be coming back for
revenge. You know how these things go. You kill my brother, I kill your sister and it goes all the way. All right. So he is a little bit fearful. U then what
happens is that he had in chapter 14 he has met Mckelzedc who is basically the
priest to the living God and Mckelzedc tells him that his victory is actually not because of him and his 318 men is
because of God God's blessing. He recognized that. He gives McKillcet one/tenth of all his treasure which is a
tithe. And then the king of Sodom comes and this is an evil horrible man and he
offers uh Abraham the rest of the war booty and and Adam and Abraham says no I
don't want one cent. So all the treasure that he got back from this great victory all the loot he actually gives to the
king of Sodom. because he doesn't want a king of Sodom to say that I have made Abraham rich. And so therefore he's left
uh with with not very much. And then Abraham tells the Lord, "Oh Lord, what will you give me? For I continue to be
childless and the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus." And Abraham said, "Behold, you've given me no offspring
and a member of my household will be my heir." And so the doubt comes in because
here he's won a great battle, but he lost all the money. He gave it all away. He's supposed to have land. He doesn't
really have the land. There's no title to his name. He's supposed to have offspring. There's nothing there. His wife is pushing on in age. And he's very
old. So the doubt comes in and he brings this doubt before God. And then he's
left with basically empty hands. He just, you know, in his hands what he has promises. And it looks like empty
promises. And I wonder if this morning uh any of us sitting in the hall have
come across a situation where you kind of left with empty promises. You stepped out in faith to give your life to the
Lord and do something that you he he wanted you to do. In the end you you're alone. You don't have very much and
you've got empty hands. Um the trouble is why does do we have doubt? doubt
comes just like in Abraham's situation when what we see doesn't correlate to
what we know, isn't it? We know we have a promise from God. We know we're going to get the offspring. We know we're
going to get the land, but what you see doesn't correlate with what we know. Um like this, you see, eating up men from
the helicopter or have a very old baby sitting on the
shoulders of someone. when what we see doesn't correlate with what we know. Doubt is based on new experience not new
information. You understand how how we get fear and doubt is that we got something new that comes in our life.
It's an experience but it doesn't change information. For example, if you have new information, this is Simka Jakovich
who claims to have found in 2007 the tomb of Jesus because in this tomb it
says Jesus son of Joseph. Uh and then this is the tomb at Talpia. Now this is
new information. If this was true then you must have doubt unless you're a
crazy person rational people who have doubt and say look Jesus is supposed to have risen and
gone out right you find the bones of Jesus Christianity is finished and I would be the first to go to leave
because there's new information but in doubt this is actually a a fraud. So
it's been well disproven by scholars. So there is no new information. That's just new experience. And the new experience
that we actually have is unanswered prayer. Lots of times we think God wants us to do something or we pray for
something that we absolutely are convinced that God wants us to have and when he doesn't answer it, it would seem
as if his promises are empty. Uh we and we dare not trust God because if we
trust God, he might fail us. If we fail us, our faith will be scuttled. So therefore, we're scared to to lose our
faith. So we're scared to ask God. Uh this is uh unanswered prayer or if
you read recently that a terror attacks in in Paris uh people died
129 people died 300 over injured um in Mali there are bomb attacks in there's a
airplane from Russia that was blown up and it was blown up by a little soda can
you imagine that a tiny little soda can put in the right place and the plane comes down and times of this our our
faith is kind of shaken, isn't it? God is supposed to look after us. God is supposed to be our shield. God's supposed to protect us, right? And then
if you were sitting on that plane, where is God? Let me give you a quote from a very staunch famous Christian. His name
is the bishop, Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. He said, "God, why why is
this happening? Where are you in all of this?" Yes, I doubt. Here we got
Archbishop of Canterbury himself actually doubting whether God cares, God
exists, God is there. He's done this last year too. Last year in a similar situation, he just said this, look, this
is all very well, but it isn't about time you did something if you're there. He actually questioning the fact that
whether God is there and so therefore true faith even from established
Christians has room for doubt. Uh the misconception is doubt. Uh true faith has no doubt. And when you actually have
doubt, you actually have a great sense of guilt because you're supposed to have all this faith in God, but actually you
doubt when your circumstances change. Um this is house uh in a famous movie star.
He says if you could reason to religious people there would be no religious people. Religious people are guys with
all the kind of certainty they don't even listen to reason. They're supposed to have that kind of impenetrable faith
that no matter what happens, black skies, dark skies, bright skies, they still believe um that this element of
tru uh certainty. Uh this is Daniel Taylor's book on the myth of certainty. And he writes something which is very
true. He says u truth is best served in my view by our being equally unimpressed
with those who claim to have it all neatly tied in their own packages with those who pedal the self-fulfilling
cliche that there is no truth. Most people live in the real world understand the foolishness of both. So Daniel
Teller is saying there is a spectrum and on one end you have people
who have it all tied up. They know everything. They're absolutely certain.
On the other hand, there are a whole bunch of people who don't know anything and say there's no truth. And basically both ends of the spectrum are not true.
Um the other issue is doubt is unbelief. That if you actually doubt it's sinful
because it's unbelief. uh you're not actually believing God and you actually get doubt and here you actually have the
famous story of the man whose son is demonpossessed and he wants Jesus to
heal the son and he believes he comes to Jesus and Jesus uh uh confronts uh uh
the son and he wants and Jesus says in order to believe to heal you have to believe and he says to Jesus I believe
but help my unbelief so what actually just talking about he's actually help my
doubt uh because if he had no faith, he wouldn't come to Jesus in the first place. He's had just enough faith to
come to Jesus, but not enough to go past the threshold because he has doubt. So doubt is something in between where you
actually don't have full faith and you actually don't have unbelief. Unbelief is you actually reject the proposition.
When you actually have faith, you accept the proposition. You have courage as a result. If you reject the proposition,
you have cowardice. You've got unbelief. So doubt is a situation that's in
between. Uh Francis Bacon says if you believe you begin with certainty you
will end up with great doubts. If you start off with doubts you will end up with great certainty. So what he's
saying is that doubt is a way in which you actually get certainty. Doubt is a human process where you actually work
through issues in your life so that you come back with a more certain faith. And
what is this based on? It is based on scripture. It is based on plain reason. Martin Luther says, "Unless I'm
convinced by scripture and plain reason, my conscience is
captive to the word of God." Um, this is Thomas, the doubting Thomas. Remember,
he he doubted the Lord when he had actually risen from the dead. Ah, this is not possible. Never seen any enemy
rise from dead. And what he did was say, you know, I want to stick my finger. So he stuck his finger inside Jesus' side
and he immediately explained, "My Lord and my God." And this is the highest
exclamation of faith any disciple has given Jesus Christ. Compared him to
Peter, compared him to the other disciples. It is Thomas who actually says, "My Lord and my God." So doubt
isn't necessarily wrong, but doubt must be resolved. How do you resolve doubt?
Doubt is sometimes said to be like a spinning coin. It spins. You don't like
it when it's spinning. You know why? We It's going to be head or tails or heads or tails and it's a very uncomfortable
situation. You don't need to feel bad about doubt. You actually have to resolve doubt. Um so couple of weeks ago
in this famous theater in Paris, I don't know if some of you have been to Paris would have been in this theater. uh
129 people I think were shot dead um in this horrible theater. How did the
people of Paris respond? How do how do secular people how do non-Christians
deal with doubt and fear in their lives? Um they had a people there you know
right opposite Patlan theater whole bunch of people held a vigil and they
sang songs. This is one of the songs they sang. If you know these words, please sing
after me. Three, four.
[Music] One more time. One more time.
[Music] Ooh.
Ooh. [Music] Here's a little song I wrote. You might
want to sing it. Don't worry.
Be happy. Come on, sing it. In every life we have some trouble. When
you worry, you make it double. Don't worry.
Be happy. Don't worry, be happy now.
[Music]
Oo. [Music]
[Music]
You got a place to lay your head. Somebody came and took your bed. Don't
worry, be happy.
The landlord say your rent is late. You may have to litigate. Don't worry.
Be happy. Look at me. I'm happy now.
Oo, don't worry.
Be happy. Don't worry. Be happy. Nowoo.
[Music]
Last time we say woo. [Music]
Ooh. Oo,
don't worry. Be happy. Yeah.
I can't believe it. Right after a place where they took out 129 bodies, they
sing this song. This is how you cope with doubt. Uh you you bury it and you you the world makes
believe that there is a dream that carries on. It doesn't matter if 120 something people get killed. Uh we just
ignore it and life is just your attitude. If you change your attitude, you'll be happy. It is how we should
deal with because because in real life that's what people do, don't they? They just sing songs and be happy or your
your child has stubbed his toe and and you just kiss it and he says it'll be fine. How do you know it's going to be
fine? What evidence do you have that it's going to be fine? uh what the and
in the light in the wake of the Paris disasters, you know, one book actually
is flying off the shelf. If you look at CNN who reported it, can't imagine it was not a book I I made that song by an
American uh um uh songwriter. This book is by an American author as well. It's
flying off the shelves. You can't even buy in Paris. All of Paris is flocking to it to give it hope. and his book
written by Ernest Hemingway uh 1920s and he wrote the book called a movable
feast. Uh this is the French uh uh word for it and is translated as pyrus is a
party. And here it writes that if you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man then wherever you go for
the rest of your life it stays with you for Paris is a movable feast. The Parisians are saying, you know, as
Ernest Hemingway has experienced, Paris is a wonderful place. It's a movable feast. It's it's a Paris is the
experience. Paris is a phenomenon which you can take with your heart. Wherever you go, they cannot destroy it. It's a
movable feast. Wherever we go, it's impenetrable. They will shoot people. They put bombs, but you cannot destroy
our vision. So they're saying that so what these parishes are doing is that they're going back to the memory what
Paris was and trying to keep that alive. Psychologists tells us that courage is a
choice. In the final analysis, courage is essentially is the existential choice. Courage is a empowering
experience of a decision to stand up and withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. And when wounded or
knocked down to pick oneself up and dust oneself off and keep on going. Isn't it?
That's what they tell us because all you have is to reach inside of you because if you don't have God, the only thing
that you can have is to to reach inside of you and just make a decision to live and carry on with life no matter what
the odds are. Uh Beethoven did that at 28. He was struck death, I think. Uh and
and he couldn't hear and he had this brilliant music career ahead of him. And
what he did was he reached inside and he produced anger. He was very angry. He
was hit. Why? Of all people, of all musicians, of all people in the world, you could hit the coal miner, you could
hit a doctor, but you don't hit a musician. And he was having deafness. And he used this anger to make a choice.
And he actually became a great composer. And he died later on in his 50s. So what
do we do when we have doubt? How do we confront doubt? We we turn to the church. Correct? Don't let worries kill
you. Let the church help. You don't get a job, right?
So doubts must be resolved and and the word of God tells us about five things
that come out from this passage we're going to dig into right now. We need to relay our fears to the Lord. We need to
receive the word, recapture the vision, review our journey, and finally because of that resolve to believe. Here is what
Abraham says. Abraham says, "Oh Lord, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and
the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus. And Abraham said, "Behold, you have given me no offspring, a member of
my household will be my heir." Now, this is him waiting for many years, having no
offspring at all. And what he's decided to do, Lord, since you haven't given me anybody, I'm going to take my servant
Eleazar, I'm going to adopt him as my heir. And this is something which is totally acceptable in the culture
because God doesn't seem to be able to answer his prayers. If you look at uh the newsy tablets which are taken in
northern Iraq of a group of people who live uh from 1450 to 1350 uh BC. It
tells us of the culture of the time and this is a tablet which reads Shari Halu
with references to Shaim Mama all the lands of his earnings of every sort gave
Shaima one portion of his property. If Shahihaloo should have a son of his own
as a principal son he shall take a double share. Shaim Mama will be next in order and take his proper share. As long
as Shi Shari Halah is alive, Shannidima will revere him. When Shere Hilu dies,
Shinima will be the heir. Very tough on the tongue,
but this is very clear. It tells us that you actually adopt a son and that son
will be your heir. If you have your own son come out, then sorry, the fellow gets uh half a share, the son gets a
full share. But that's still a legitimate thing. So what he's doing is um part of their culture. This is the
same culture that actually uh adopts your sis the woman as your sister before
you marry her. That's why you actually have uh Abraham's sister is Sarai. He
actually adopted her as a sister and then he marries her. So you've got this sort of uh traditions at that particular
time. Uh so he brings it up to God and when we have new and and this is a
psalm called Psalm 773 where where he reads truly God is good to Israel but
those who are pure in heart but for me my feet had almost stumbled my heart had my steps had nearly slipped for I was
envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. So doubt comes when you actually have new experiences
when you see prosperity people doing so well you're not doing so well then you get doubtful and then you think of ways
in which you could overcome it and so how do we resolve the doubt we bring it
to God we tell it to him and here we have Abraham complaining to God you know I waited so long no child what happened
what happened you know it's okay to bring doubts to God the second thing is that the word of God comes to Abraham he
is supposed to receive the word. After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision saying, "Fear not. I am your shield. Your reward shall
be very great." Um Psalm 756 was the psalm which the archbishop of
Canteraby when he was having these doubts, he said, "This really mean ministered to him." When he actually
doubted the presence of God, he looked at Psalm 76 who actually said, "You have kept the count of my tossings and put my
tears in your bottle." And God ministered to him and told him that when how many times you turn around your bed,
I can count. How many tears you spread that you lose also I can count in the
bottle which is wonderful. It ministered to him. So God's word ministers to him. Uh and he's and and God tells him fear
not Abraham I am your shield. And the other word is should be
translated I am your very great reward. Two things which are very very relevant.
I'm your shield because he's facing military disaster. He's going to have a coalition of four kings coming back to
him and wanting revenge and go saying, I'm going to protect you. I am your
great reward because he's lost all this money. His hands are empty and God's saying, don't worry. I am your great
reward. So these are actually practical word of God given to him. So he receives it and God tells him this man shall not
be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. He tells you don't worry you don't have to. You don't have to adopt
someone. Your own son will be heir. So therefore, when we have doubts, we not
only have to relay these doubts to God, but we also have to receive God's word when we look at it and to apply it in
our lives. Thirdly is to recapture the vision. He takes uh Abraham out into the
um fields and he asks him to count all the stars. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10. He's
counting, counting, counting, counting. And he says to him uh very clearly uh look towards the heaven and number the
stars if you're able to number them. And he said to him so shall your offspring be. He takes him out. Why does he take
him out? Anybody know why he takes him out? Show him the stars. Because doubt comes
because of a new experience, not because of new information. He knows he's going
to get it. But what God does is brings him out, shows him the splendor of all the stars and he's counting. When he
finished counting to one quadrillion and five, he's got a new experience, right? And
God tells him, "These shall be your offspring." And that's very important.
Um if you look at chapter 13 um when Abraham had chosen Canaan and
Lot had chosen the other bits of land which is east of Jordan uh he said to lift up your eyes and look for a place
where you're you are north and south and east and west for all the lands that you will see I will give to you and your
offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth so that if one can count the dust of the earth your offspring will be counted.
Arise and walk through the length and the breadth of the land for I will give it to you. You know what God did? Did he
tell you, "Hey, Abraham, you Google and see how big the map is." He didn't do that. What did he make him do? Walk
as far as you can walk the length and breath. This shall be your land. Why does he make him walk? Because you've
got a great experience where you walk. The mosquitoes will attack you, the alligators will attack you, will see everything, you will experience
everything. And after coming back ah very and God says that is your land not new
information but a new experience and I thought it's important to recapture
visions you know I don't know what are the areas in your life where you can recapture vision some people in churches
like to do prayer walk nothing magical about a prayer walk but a prayer walk is simply recapturing God's vision you take
the church and you we get on the streets you walk through the hall the streets of Sububang Jaya see all the CD lanes and
the difficult areas and you claim all this for Jesus Christ that's recapturing the vision. If you go down to Chalk or
you walk around or you go to Sallaya market and you walk around and you see all the people there it recaptures the
vision. So therefore when you have doubts you go back to a place where God has shown you this is your mission
field. This is where you recapture your vision. Perhaps there's a place in your past where you actually were rededicated
yourself to the Lord or the particular church or particular place or particular incident. You go back and you rewalk
that and you recapture the vision which is what Abraham did. Thirdly, he
reviewed his journey. I am the Lord who brought you out of Calaldans to give you
land to pres possess. Whenever you encounter doubt, God brings you up and
tells Abraham, remember I'm the Lord who brought you out of the of Calaldans to
give you this land. He asks him to look backwards. This is where I have brought
you all you know it's not taking a bus ride from earth is a very very long way
and it's a very hazardous way. He's asking Abraham to review his journey and the fact that he made it wasn't because
of himself but God actually had brought him and and and this is a very useful way of looking at dealing with doubt.
I've got when we deal with people who go to alpha. A lot of people go to alpha and halfway through alpha they're
wondering whether I should believe in Jesus Christ. And the most common if I were to talk to you I would be saying
well before you came to alpha you were agnostic you were atheist you were a
Buddhist or whatever halfway through alpha do you still believe in Buddha?
Most turn you to me and say no. Do you believe in Jesus? No.
But the fact that they don't believe in their former beliefs anymore shows you that they've gone through a journey,
isn't it? And so you got only two choices. You either jump forward or go back. And most people in a journey of
faith can't go back anymore. But if you can't go back, you must go forward. Whether you can see or you cannot see,
you go forward. So therefore, reviewing the back tells you, I have spent my life
in this journey. It's not for nothing. God has proven himself real in my life. So therefore I have to go forward and
you take the leap forward and that's how you resolve your doubts. You relay your fears to the Lord. You receive the word.
You recapture the vision and you review your journey. And because of all these steps he's able to say the faith is
answered. Doubts are answered and the faith is grown. He knows God's more certainly enjoys God's more deeply. And
he says, I believe the Lord and it counted to him as righteousness.
This is not existential courage. This is belief based on God's words and God's
deeds. And the word is and it was credited to him or counted to him. It's
basically means to confer a status on something that was not there before. It's like your credit card. You don't
have money in the bank, but funnily enough that plastic thing can buy things, right? Because your your your
your signature that you will pay is nothing, right? It's not really money, but it's credited to you as money. It's
conferred to you a status that was not there before. So, usually if you were to
live a moral life and you obey God's law, you'll be called godly person. Then you will have a righteousness and before
God's throne in judgment, one day you'll be acquitted. That's how it usually works. But for Abraham, he is ungodly
and he basically just trusts God's promises. And that trust is basically
counted as righteousness. Usually, it's living the life that's counted as
righteousness. Here is trust that's counted as righteousness. So, Abraham believes God and it was reckoned to him
as credit to him as righteous. He didn't earn it. Romans chapter 4, Paul says, "Now to the one who works, his wages are
not counted as a gift but as his due. The one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly. His
faith is counted as righteousness. Which means you know what the word is ungodly.
Ungodly is the one who does not worship God. Who is ugly, wicked, doesn't
deserve it. Paul is saying he didn't gain his righteousness through works. He
gained it by faith. Is counted to him righteousness. So therefore, we are not
supposed to get on a certain position, a certain level of submission and worship
and then you don't clean up your life so that God will accept you. A lot of people say, "I'm like a beggar. I don't
deserve it. I'm going to clean up my life. I'm going to live a good life and then God will accept me." That's not
true. Abraham's faith, some people think Abraham's faith was an act of obedience that warranted God's favor. It is a kind
of righteousness. It is not. It is credited to him as righteousness. uh
Martin Luther says in his very famous uh uh Latin phrase which Yedian preached
about simultustus ecore which means you're simultaneously
just and simultaneously sinful. So he believed God and it was
counted him as righteousness. So the father of faith has some similarities with us. He has a bunch of promises
which he believes God for a land prosperity a nation and blessing other
nations. We have a bunch of promises that Jesus Christ will save us from our
sin and we will be in heaven with him. Similar thing. All right. He didn't know
how his righteousness credited to him. We know our credit our righteousness is credited to us because of the cross of
what Jesus Christ did on the cross. So blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and those whose sins are
covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sins. So even to this day going forward if we sin
our sin is no longer counted against us because when we believe in Jesus Christ it is credited to us as righteousness.
Let me conclude with the last point. The last point is basically confidence. Real confidence is
based on the blazing torch. Um
he said, "Oh Lord, how can how am I to know that I possess it?" He believes
God. It was credited to him as righteousness. And yet on the other hand, he says, "I want to know." You
know what he wants? He wants guarantee. He want God to guarantee him. How?
He doesn't trust God all that much. And he's actually asking for a guarantee. Uh
this is the almighty god. Um last week
very famous individual came to town supposed to be the most powerful man in
the entire world right they call him POTUS president of the United States and
he first stop was Taylor's university where this young man stood up his name
shall be etched in uh memory in the halls of fame in this country his name
is Althia Stan remember that maybe a DAP leader one day. I don't
know. Althia Tan stood up and then before the August uh uh assembly there is actually
asked, you know, what about Malaysian transparency in his political processes and justice and all that. You know what
he's asking. Anyway, so he asked the question to the president of the United States who took a while and basically
look at him and our economy and our disaster is thinking of doing taking it up but I will take it up. But then
again, you know what he said? United States is a large country with a lot of influence and sometimes people
don't want us to meddle in the internal affairs. In my own country, we have our problems and we wouldn't want to tell others what to do.
So if Alfus Tan was going to ask the most powerful man in the entire world
for some guarantee that something could be done, Obama turned around and give
him this uh wa is a four-letter word actually comes up.
I mean this the most powerful man in the world. the best can do is I'll bring it
up, you know, over tea, you know, then we'll laugh about it and then we'll talk about something else because it's God. No, no,
no. When Abraham brings it up to God,
