The Father of Missionaries.
He went out, as many had gone out before him, as many would go out after him. He moves onwards and onwards towards the setting sun, till at length all progress is stopped by the sea barrier which parts him from the unknown worlds beyond. There, from those bare mountain heights, he would look down on the purple ocean, with its boundless expanse and its ceaseless turmoil, the ocean, terrible even to his late descendants. What must have been his thoughts as he remembered that promise, the Divine and irrevocable promise, that his seed should be as the stars of heaven for multitude, and that in him all families of the earth should be blessed? For while all else in the scene was changed, the stars, the sacrament and the promise remained unchangeable, as the promise itself was unchangeable. They shone overhead each particular star with its own light, in its own region, above that strange, vague ocean, just as they had shone over his boyhood in his familiar inland home.
I. Whence comes it that, in the ceaseless tide of humanity, rolling westward throughout the ages, this one caravan of a simple nomad Bedouin this single drop in the mighty stream has fastened on itself the attention of men? The answer is contained in one word, It was his faith which singled him out in the counsels of God, and has stamped him in the hearts of men. He saw, as in a glass, he read, as in a dark enigma, the glory of the great Messianic day, when his children should rule over the earth. The shadow of the future was projected on the experience of the present. He saw, and he believed; he went forth, nothing doubting; he went forth, not knowing whither he went.
II. Abraham was not only faithful himself, but he was also the father of the faithful. Look at the history of the Jewish race. What was the secret of its long life, the principle which revived, animated, sustained it, amidst all disasters and under every oppression? Was it not faithfaith in a Divine call, in a Divine mission for the race? With all their narrowness and all their weakness aye, and amidst all their defections, too, this faith never died out. It was the breath of their national life. The spirit of Abraham never altogether left his children. "The vanquished," said Seneca bitterly of the Jews, "have given laws to the victors." What would he have said if he could have looked forward for three centuries, and forecast the time when the spiritual Israel the offspring of Abraham by faith should plant its throne on the ruins of the majesty and power of Imperial Rome?
J. B. Lightfoot, Occasional Sermons,p. 38.
References: Hebrews 11:8. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxi., No. 1242; vol. v., No. 261; Homiletic Magazine,vol. xi., p. 365; J. Thain Davidson, Talks with Young Men,p. 89; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvi., p. 145; D. Bushell, Ibid.,vol. xxxiv., p. 372.Hebrews 11:8-10. Homilist,1st series, vol. i., p. 119; F. W. Robertson, Sermons,3rd series, p. 77.