Hebrews 11:9

By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.

Sojourner in the land of promise was the only status Abraham ever had in Canaan. Although God had indeed promised it to him, he never pretended to possess it. When beloved Sarah died, he insisted on weighing out 400 shekels of silver to Ephron the Hittite of the children of Heth for the purchase of the cave of Machpelah as a burial place, the only part of Canaan to which Abraham ever had an earthly deed or title (Genesis 23:16). It was squarely here, in his de-emphasis of the present world, that the glory of Abraham chiefly centered. God was his inheritance, his shield, his exceeding great reward; and, as related in the following verse, Abraham looked to the eternal city, the city that hath the foundations, in that upper and better kingdom for the realization of all his hopes. He treated the world as a mere bridge, something to pass over, but not a place to dwell. That remarkable attitude of God's friend reminds one of a certain "unwritten saying" of our Lord; and, without placing any confidence in such so-called unwritten sayings, we recall one related by David Smith which is so suggestive of the true teachings of Christ that it could well be authentic. It is given herewith as an illustration of Abraham's evaluation of the world.

In the year 1849, the Scottish missionary, Dr. Alexander Duff, in the course of a journey up the river Ganges, visited the town of Futeh-pur-Sikri, twenty-four miles west of Agra. It is a ruinous place, but it retains one imposing edifice, the Muslim mosque, which is one of the largest in the world. Its principal gateway is a magnificent structure, 120 feet in both height and breadth; and inside the gateway, on the right, as one enters, Dr. Duff observed an Arabic inscription in large characters. To his surprise and delight, it proved to be a (reputed) saying of our Lord, which, rendered into English runs thus: "Jesus on whom be peace, has said: `The World is merely a bridge: ye are to pass over it, and not build your dwellings upon it'."[18]

Certainly, Abraham, a tent-dweller, qualified as one who did not regard the earth as a permanent residence; and there is a genuine sense in which this earth is not the true home of the soul. The New Testament teaches that the Christian's citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20), that his treasure is above (Matthew 6:19), that his Lord is there (John 14:3), that his hope is in heaven (Hebrews 6:19), and that even his name is inscribed above (Luke 10:20). But do people live as though they received this truth? What is the world to the Christians of our day? Is it the pathway, or an end in itself?. As the years pass, are the world and its treasures being more and more diminished in our eyes, and is the Lord Jesus Christ growing ever more and more wonderful and desirable in our esteem? God grant that it might indeed be so for all whom Christ has saved and who have set out like Abraham of old to seek the city that hath foundations.