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Pioneers of the Heavenly Way
by T. Austin-Sparks
Chapter 3 – Abraham – A Great Pioneer
Reading: Hebrews 11:13-16
We return now to Abraham as one of the representative pioneers of the heavenly way. We begin by reiterating one thing which was so true of Abraham, but which must be true, and is always true, of every spiritual pioneer, of every one who is moving on to explore and exploit the heavenly kingdom: that is, his sense, his deep, inborn sense, of destiny. Stephen has told us, concerning Abraham, that “The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham” (Acts 7:2) when he was in Ur of the Chaldees.
We do not know how the God of glory appeared unto him. It may have been in one of those theophanies common to the Old Testament and common to Abraham’s later life when God came to him in man-form. We do not know. But we do know from his whole life that the effect of it was to bring to birth in him this tremendous sense of destiny – the sense of destiny which uprooted him from the whole of his past life, and which created in him a deep unrest, unrest of a right kind, a deep and a holy discontent.
Discontent may be all wrong, but there is a right kind of discontent. Would to God many more Christians had it! There was started in Abraham an urge which grew and grew through the years and made it impossible for him to settle down and accept anything less than the full meaning of God. He could not accept a second-best in relation to God. Of course, the consciousness of that had to grow. He had to come progressively to realise what it meant. It came in this way: that he arrived at a certain place, and perhaps thought that here was it, and then he found it was not, and he had to move; and then perhaps he thought, ‘Now, this is it – but no, it is not. There is still – I do not know what it is, I cannot define, explain, but I know within me there is still something more that God has’.
“Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on” (Phil 3:12); it was this urge through the ages – so very real in the case of the man whose words I have just quoted. He was never able to accept God’s second-best. God has a second-best. Again and again in history God has found it impossible to realise His ‘first best’, His very best. People would not go on. He said, ‘All right, you shall have My second-best’, and they had it; but pioneers never do that. Abraham could not do it.
Now, do not misunderstand or misinterpret this. This was not natural or temperamental instability. Do not think that, if you are a person who is never contented, that is a Divine discontent. It may be temperamental. You may be one of those people who can never stick at a thing for very long, who are always jumping from one thing to another. You will be an entire misfit, both in the world and in the kingdom of God. It was not that sort of thing with Abraham. There was something of heaven working in him, the proof of it being that he was always on the upward move; he was not on the horizontal, he was on the upward move. He was making progress, not only on the earth level, but spiritually, all the time.
Now you see, alongside of Abraham there was Lot, and Lot was a man who was always seeking security here. He sought the city; he sought a house. He disliked this tent life. He wanted to be settled in this world, and he sought to be settled. But Lot was the weak man with all that. Abraham who was always moving in a tent was the strong man. This was not natural at all, it was spiritual. This urge from heaven, this mighty working of a spiritual force in Abraham brought him into the very hard school of the heavenly. To the natural, to the earthly, to the flesh, the heavenly is a very hard school, and Abraham was brought into it by this urge from heaven.
