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Martin Memorial Seventh-day Adventist Church

Norman McNulty

Pilgrims and Strangers

And I always enjoy coming to Centerville.

And before we get into our message, let's go ahead and bow our heads for a word of prayer.

Our Father in heaven, we just pray that you would be with us in a special way today.

We thank you for the blessing that we have of worshipping you.

And I pray that we would set our hearts and minds upon heavenly things and that you would speak to us in a special way today.

The title for our message this morning is pilgrims and strangers.

You know, it's less than 2 weeks until Thanksgiving Day.

Before you know it, we will be sitting together with family and friends eating a meal, thanking the Lord for the blessings that he's given us.

And every year that we have Thanksgiving, it's a continuation of what started so many years ago when Squanto and the Indians and the Pilgrims met together to thank God for his blessings of sustaining their needs, that first harvest in America.

And yet sometimes I wonder, you know, when you look at the pilgrims, they left England and they went to Holland so that they could find religious liberty, and then they fled Holland and came to America, where America provided that land of religious liberty which as of now it still is a place where we can worship God in freedom.

And yet sometimes I wonder that when we come to Thanksgiving and when we come to that Thanksgiving dinner, what are we thanking God for?

Is it for the good food and for the prosperity that God has given us?

Is it for our football team winning the game on Thanksgiving?

Or are we like the pilgrims of old, seeking a better country?

Because That's what Thanksgiving was originally founded upon.

And I want to take a look at this passage of scripture in Hebrews chapter 11, where the pilgrims really took their name from.

They said they were seeking a better country.

And yet it has so much more meaning than just the ancient pilgrims coming from Holland, across the Atlantic, landing in Plymouth, and setting up in the land of America where we can still enjoy the benefits of a land where we can worship God in freedom.

And I want to start in verse 8 of Hebrews chapter 11.

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." Here Abraham is called to go to a different place.

This is how Abraham becomes a pilgrim, a stranger.

He is the original pilgrim and stranger of scripture.

Leaving his land, Ur of the Chaldees, going to a place that he should after receive for an inheritance, but throughout the years of Abraham's life, Abraham never received the promised land as an inheritance.

And in fact, when Abraham's wife died, he had to buy a piece of property to bury her because that property did not belong to him.

God said this land will be yours, but yet throughout the rest of his life when he lived in the land of promise he never owned his own property until he bought that cave.

Verse 9, by faith he sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.

Now notice, Abraham is living in the land of promise.

Now when you look at the type of housing that Abraham lived in, did he build a three-story mansion that had 2 floors of basements below the 3 stories?

Tents are something that you can just pick up and move as quickly as you need to.

But Abraham, he's living in the land of promise, and yet his own housing, he's not putting roots into them.

He's not putting a foundation into the house.

He's dwelling as if he doesn't belong there, even though it's the land of promise.

And he raised his son and his grandson, Isaac and Jacob came up with the same mentality.

They were the heirs of the same promise, but yet they lived in this land of promise as if they were living in a strange country.

Now why did they live their lives in such a way?

Verse 10 says, For he looked for a city which does have foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

You see, Abraham wasn't living for the present life.

He wasn't living for the here and now and saying, here I've gotten to the land of promise, now I've arrived, let's build a mansion, let's put our roots down, let's make ourselves comfortable and happy.

No, he looked for a city which has foundations, which is a direct contrast to the tent that he's living in.

His tent did not have a foundation, but the city that he was looking for does.

He looked for a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God." Somehow in this promise where God told Abraham to come out of the land of Ur of the Chaldees and come to this land of promise which his seed would inherit.

He knew that in this call he wasn't coming to just receive a great land that would become his own.

The call to come out of Ur of the Chaldees was a call to come out of the world so that his mind would be set on that city which is to come, the heavenly city.

And he lived his life on this present earth in such a way that he was a pilgrim and a stranger to it.

He did not put roots down into this earth.

And when we come to verse 13, we read, these all died in faith, not having received the promises.

Now from a worldly standpoint you would say Abraham was crazy.

He left his family, he left everything he knew, He left probably very comfortable, nice housing in Mesopotamia, which was the nicest place in the world to live at that time.

And he goes out to a place that God says, you're not going to inherit it while you're alive, but your seed will receive it later on, but you can dwell in this land as a stranger, but someday in the future you will receive a promise, and the world would say, you've got to be crazy to walk away from a comfortable life, from family and from friends, to go to a place that will never belong to you during this life.

These all died in faith, not having received the promises.

Abraham, when he came to the end of his life, still had not inherited the land of promise.

But having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

You see, when God gives his promises to his people, those who are truly connected to the living God will see the value of God's promises no matter how far off they may be compared to what this world has to offer in the here and now.

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but by faith they saw the promises.

And here's what God's promises did to them.

So it wasn't just Abraham, It was Isaac and Jacob, it was Sarah, and you could say it applies to all those who live a life of faith throughout scripture.

Having seen them afar off and were persuaded of them.

That's number 1, they were persuaded of God's promises.

Not only that, they embraced God's promises and not only that, they confessed.

Point number 1, Abraham and his family were persuaded of God's promises.

And in fact, when you look at Romans 4, verse 21, it says of Abraham being fully persuaded that what God had promised he was able also to perform.

Abraham knew God and he believed what God said.

So Abraham had an intellectual assent and an understanding that what God promised would be true.

Look, if you're going to be a pilgrim and stranger headed on your way to the heavenly kingdom, the first step is to be convinced of the promises of God's word.

If you can't even believe God's promises, you're not going to get to the second or the third point in this illustration.

Abraham understood that God was the creator God whose word speaks into existence and calleth those things which be not as though they were.

And so he sees these promises afar off, and he is persuaded that what God has promised, he is going to perform.

And as God's people, we need to become persuaded of the Word of God.

Not only did Abraham and his family, not only were they persuaded of God's promises, it says they embraced them.

Now, in the Greek, this word embraced means, among other things, to receive joyfully.

When Abraham saw God's promises, he received these promises joyfully.

When God called him to come out of Ur of the Chaldees, to leave everything that he knew, to go to a land where he wouldn't know anybody, where he would be a stranger and a pilgrim, he embraced or received joyfully the promises of God, even though it involved inconvenience in leaving what he was comfortable with.

His belief caused him to then embrace or receive joyfully God's promises that God had something better for him.

You know, we live in a world where seeing is believing.

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Pilgrims and Strangers

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