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The sermon uses Abraham’s call to leave his homeland as a paradigm for faith that obeys without knowing the destination. Spurgeon teaches that God uses trials, separation, uncertainty, and even death to mature faith and bring His people toward their promised inheritance. Believers are urged to submit fully to God’s providence because God is wise, good, and present with them. The sermon’s hope culminates in confidence that death leads the believer into the Father’s home and everlasting fellowship with God.
Theological center: God’s sovereign and gracious providence guides His people safely, and faith responds through obedient trust in God’s wisdom, goodness, and presence.
Applications: Follow God’s guidance · Trust God in uncertainty · Faith grows through trials · The Guide matters more than the road
Primary texts: Hebrews 11:8 · Matthew 10:37 · Hebrews 13:6
“By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.” Hebrews 11:8 ABRAHAM’S faith was of the most eminent order, for he is called the Father of the Faithful. Let us rest assured that nothing but repeated and fiery trials could have trained his faith to so great a strength as that which it exhibited in his preparation to slay his son at the command of God. This true Jerusalem blade was long tempered before it gained its marvelous edge and matchless temper. Men come not to their perfect stature except by years of growth. Stars cannot reach the zenith of the heavens by one sudden flash, nay even the sun himself must climb to his meridian. Trials are the winds which root the tree of our faith. They are the trainers, drilling God’s young soldiers, and teaching their hands to war and their fingers to fight. Foremost among Abraham’s trials was that of being called away to a land which he had never seen. As this may be our trial also, I pray that my words may be adapted to our present condition. I. First, let us LOOK AT ABRAHAM. Abraham’s family was originally an idolatrous one, afterwards some beams of light shone in upon the household, and they became worshippers of the true God, but there was much ignorance mingled with their worship, and at least occasionally their old idolatrous habits returned. The Lord who had always fixed on Abraham to be His chosen servant and the father of His chosen people upon earth, made Abraham leave the society of his friends and relatives, and go out of Ur of the Chaldees, and journey away to the land of Canaan, which He had promised afterwards to give him for an inheritance. We shall notice first what Abraham left, and then, where Abraham went, the trial is made up of these two things. What had he to leave? He had to leave behind him those who were exceeding dear to him. It is true that just after his first call, his own father, Terah, died, having gone a part of the way with Abraham and detained Abraham a little while by sickness. Abraham then went on his way, obedient to the Lord’s command. Nevertheless, he left behind him all the association of his youth, the house in which he had been trained, the family with which he had been nursed, all those whom he had known and with whom he had taken sweet counsel, and he must go forth into exile from the family of his love. He left behind him his native country, and to a patriot that is no small struggle—to leave all the associations of one’s country, and bear with us one’s…