The Place of Faith
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
Unbelief is black with the frown of God; faith is regnant with the smile of God. Unbelief closes every channel of blessing; faith opens up the channels and starts the flow of blessings.
"All things are possible to him that believeth"; nothing in the realm of the spiritual is possible to unbelief. How great is the depth of the word. "All things!" What riches of grace lie behind the portals of God's great storehouse! All of these are subject to the draft of faith.
All things are possible only to him that believeth. Mere "asking" will not get the answer, we must ask in faith. God would teach us to know of His bounty, and to trust His power to supply. Our Heavenly Father wants us to learn to "faith" Him. He rejoices in our perfect trust.
The story is told of a soldier who had, in despair, made a statement of his debts. The poor fellow wrote at the bottom, "Who can pay all of this?" Alexander entered the tent; he saw the soldier asleep at his table; he saw the tear-stained sheet the large debt, and the question, "Who can pay all of this?" Alexander stooped down and wrote across the page "Alexander."
God can pay all of our accounts. He has written down His promise and signed His Name; we, however, must have faith to present our claims at the bank of Heaven.
God may try out our faith, but He will never disappoint it. God may discipline our faith, test our faith, measure the depths of our faith, but He will never discount our faith. He has said, "According to your faith be it unto you."
God led the Children of Israel in the wilderness to try them and to see whether they would believe Him, and obey Him; however, God never failed them in one of His good promises.
The trial of our faith is of much more worth than that of gold which perisheth. Satan, when he tests, seeks to destroy and to cast down; God, when He tests, seeks to fortify and to build up. Faith must be made strong by patience; it must be fortified against discouragement; it must be mighty in courage before it can see its full fruition, and its final victory.
God would have us not only to believe upon Him, but to keep on believing. He would have us not only to build upon His promises, but to be stayed upon them. God wants us not only to have the faith which will undertake, but the faith which will continue the faith that is not wearied in well-doing.
When we make a petition of God, and the answer to our prayer is delayed, and we become discouraged and give up, God sees that our faith was not perfected, that our trust was not complete. Delays and seeming disappointments should never weaken trust. God's Word stands no matter what may befall.
Faith trusts God in the darkness, as well as in the light. Faith walks by night, the same as it walks by day. Faith against hope, believes in hope. There are no question marks in faith.
I. BELIEVE YE THAT I AM ABLE? (Matthew 9:28)
Two blind men came to Jesus, crying, "Thou Son of David, have mercy on us." The Lord Jesus quietly asked, "Believe ye that I am able to do this?" The Lord stood outside the circle of their need, ready to enter in through the door of their faith He found the door was open, and so He gave them their sight.
The question which confronts all of us, when we cry under any burden or any need, is the same question "Believe ye that I am able to do this?"
The Church needs a renewed vision of the power of the Omnipotent God. God delights in working where man cannot work; in doing what man cannot do. With God all things are possible. There is nothing too hard for Him. He delights in accomplishing the impossible. God, however, operates through the channel of our faith. We must believe that He is able and believe without wavering.
The three Hebrew Children, facing the burning fiery furnace, said to Nebuchadnezzar, "Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us." Such faith could not be denied, and Nebuchadnezzar saw four men, instead of three, loose and walking in the midst of the fire, having no hurt.
We need to know that God is God, and not man. We need to know that God is a God who is able and willing to work in behalf of those who trust Him.
Faith believes that God is able
Signs and wonders to perform,
Faith attempts an undertaking
Leaning on God's mighty arm;
Faith ne'er wavers, ne'er is fearful
The impossible to try,
Faith obeys and follows fully
When no earthly help is nigh.
II. "IF THOU CANST BELIEVE" (Mark 9:23)
Man delights in saying unto God, "If Thou canst do this, or do that." God throws back the challenge, "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth."
When God says, "I will"; man should say, "It is done." Feeble-minded men, possessed of little faith, will tremblingly say, "God can"; old faithful, with a trust that never wavers, says, "God does."
Man wants God to do, before he believes in God's power to perform; God wants man to believe, before He does. The Lord said unto Mary and Martha, "Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?"
The table is spread, it is weighted down with every good thing, and God is saying, "If thou wilt eat, thou shalt be fed." God is clothed with all power to meet our every need, whether that need is spiritual or physical: yet, the supply of our needs must come to us through the channel of faith "If thou canst believe."
God has placed in our hands a measuring line that line is our faith. God seems to say, "Place your line down on the 'goods' of My bounty, and I will cut off the cloth where thy line runs out 'According to your faith be it unto you.'"
We have not, because we ask not; we ask not, because we believe not. No power of man, no condition, no circumstance, no obstacle, can keep back the needed "supply," if we will but believe.
III. BELIEVE THAT YE RECEIVE (Mark 11:24)
This seems to human reasoning to go too far. How can we believe we have, before we receive; how can we see in hand, that which is not in hand?
Faith operates where reason cannot move. Faith does not act on the supposition that what faith claims may be done; it acts on the assurance that what God promises must be done therefore faith counts it as already done.
Faith could say, through Abraham's lips, "I will bring the lad again," although God had said, "Slay the lad." Abraham's faith saw the resurrection of Isaac at the same moment that it saw his death.
Faith does not build upon sense, nor upon human reasoning, nor upon what the eye can see. Faith builds upon "Thus saith the Lord."
Faith gives peace to the soul, rest to the heart, and assurance to the mind. We know that we already have the things which we have asked for when we pray in faith, believing. Anxiety and fear flourish only where doubt holds sway.
When Christ said to the "nobleman," "Go thy way, thy son liveth," the nobleman "believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way."
Believe that ye receive from Him
'Tis always God's own way;
The one who fully trusts in Him,
He cannot say him, "Nay";
But ye who doubt and turn from Him,
And make the flesh your stay,
And ye who do not trust in Him,
He cannot say you, "Yea."
IV. AGAINST HOPE, BELIEVING IN HOPE (Romans 4:18)
Abraham did not waver although he knew that his body was as good as dead. He believed that what God had promised, He was able to perform. He did not weigh God's possibilities by his own impossibilities. Against hope, faith revived his hope; and he believed in hope. Abraham went out, not knowing whither he went. He did not know the way, but he knew his Guide.
Paul stood up with unwavering faith, when "all hope that [they] should be saved" had passed. For fourteen days and nights the ship had been driven of a great tempest. Yet Paul had assurance from God that he and all aboard the ship would be saved thus, Paul said, "I believe God, that it shall be even as it was told me."
George Mueller went to the Captain of a steamer and said, "Captain, I must be in Quebec on Saturday afternoon." The captain said, "That is impossible do you know how dense this fog is?" Mueller replied, "Let us go down to the chart room and pray." The captain said to himself, that man is a fit subject for a lunatic asylum. However he went down. Mueller prayed. When the captain began to pray, Mueller said, "Do not pray. First, you do not believe God will answer; and second, I believe He has, and there is no need for you to pray about it." It is needless to say that God met Mueller's faith.
We need to place our eyes, not on the fog, riot on the seeming impossibility, but on God, who worketh all things after the counsel of His will.
If we walk by sight, we cannot walk by faith. One day, many years ago, we sought guidance in a very trying hour. We knelt down and prayed, "O God, as we sleep, let us hear some voice, or see some vision do something that we may know Thy will." When we woke up, we were disappointed nothing had happened. We walked to our table. There lay a book of Spurgeon's sermons open before our very eyes. Here is what we read: "He who asks God for a voice, or a dream, or a vision, shows he is unwilling to walk by faith."
V. WITHOUT FAITH WE CANNOT PLEASE GOD (Hebrews 11:6)
The eleventh of Hebrews tells the story of a wonderful star-cluster of saints who believed God. It is a wonderful chapter, filled with great accomplishments. God's worthies all received a good report by faith.
In the message of the victors who, by faith, obtained victories, is this statement: "But without faith it is impossible to please Him." God does not count anything we do, or are, as acceptable in His sight, unless we have faith. "Without faith it is impossible to please Him."
How dark is the story of the defeats of unbelief! When the Children of Israel came to Canaan they wanted to send out the spies. This they did. The result was that ten of the spies discouraged their hearts. They complained to Moses, saying, "We be not able to go up." God was displeased and sent them back into the wilderness. For thirty-eight years they wandered, until all the men of unbelief were dead. We see they could not enter in because of unbelief. Let us fear lest we fall after the same example of unbelief.
Unbelief leaves us stranded by the wayside. Unbelief leaves us smitten by the enemy. Unbelief leaves us un-linked with Heaven's dynamo. If thou canst not believe, God cannot work in thy behalf. If thou canst not believe, thou canst not receive anything from the hand of thy Lord. If thou canst not believe, God can do no mighty works through thee.
Unbelief cannot change the fact of God's grace, nor of His bounty, nor of His power to perform. Unbelief only breaks the link through which God operates; it stops up the channel; it keeps back the blessing. If some do not believe, their unbelief does not make the Word of God of no effect. Unbelief cuts off the supply, but it does not deplete God's bounty.
VI. "ACCOUNTING THAT GOD WAS ABLE" (Hebrews 11:19)
The Children of Israel limited God. They placed a question mark on God's ability to feed them. They said, "Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?" They doubted God, and turned back from following after Him. For this cause God abhorred Israel.
Abraham believed God. He counted that what God had promised He was able to perform. Upon this basis Abraham received his son, raised to life again. He believed God, and was called a friend of God.
Distrust refuses to follow the Lord fully. It will not let go of human props, and cast itself upon Jehovah. True faith says, "I'll let go, and let God." True faith is the foot that steps forth, while it is yet dark; it is the hand that is extended to God to receive what is not yet in sight; it is the eye that looks for a cloud when there is no rain in sight.
True faith obeys and goes out into the way that is desert, nothing daunting. True faith is anxious about nothing, it casts itself without reserve upon Jehovah; it commits its way to God.
True faith goes out, not knowing whither it goes. God has said, "Go," and that suffices. Abraham did not weigh the difficulties by the way he believed God. Abraham did not consider the toil as too great, the task as too heavy, the testings as too severe he believed God.
Abraham had no road map, no guide that mapped out each turn of the road, each "gas station," each place of supply. He had God, and God only; and he believed, and went out, not knowing whither he went.
"One step I see before me,
It is all I need to know,
For o'er each step of my onward way
He'll make new light to glow."
VII. WE LIVE BY FAITH (Hebrews 10:38)
We began to live by faith. It was when faith first came into our heart that we believed God and were saved. We believed His grace, we believed in Christ as our Sin-bearer; we believed, and we received eternal life.
If we began to live by faith, shall we continue to live by sight? Shall we ask of a soul, darkened in sin, a faith in the Christ of Calvary; that we, as ripened saints, are unwilling to place in the Christ of the Father's right hand? Shall we forsake the first principles of faith whereupon we found Christ, and go back to the lowlands of unbelief where we lived in the days of sin, before we came to know Him? If we believe in God, let us obey His voice. If we obey His voice, let us trust His Name. If we trust His Name, let us rely on His mercies.
The life of the Christian has no place in which to house doubts. What if it is sometimes dark; faith will find a light in the darkness. What if the sky is sometimes overcast with clouds, and storms beset the way; God will shine His face through the rifts of the clouds, and He will speak to us amid the roar of the storm.
If an army besets thy path, remember that David said, "By [my God] I have run through a troop." If a stone wall obstructs thy way, remember that David said, "And by my God have I leaped over a wall."
Trust in the Lord! He will either take away the difficulty, or He will show you how to pass through it; He will either still the storm, or else He will give you power to walk on the waves.
When the brook dried up, Elijah found that God had some other way. Some one has said that "Cherith was a difficult problem to Elijah, until he got to Zarephath, and then it was all as clear as daylight."
"God lives, shall I despair, as if He were not there?
Is not my life His care? Is not His hand Divine?" Let us walk by faith.
AN ILLUSTRATION
ESTHER GOING IN UNTO THE KING
"Queen Esther would go into the king's presence, even though there might be no golden scepter held forth; so, believer, venture into God's presence when you have no smile and no light from the countenance of your God. Trust in a withdrawing God." "A good child will believe in his father's love even when his father is angry. We believe in the sun when he is under a cloud, and shall we not believe in God when He hideth Himself? When the door of mercy is shut, then is the time for knocking. When the blessing appears to be lost, then is the season for seeking; and when favors seem to be denied, then is the hour for importunate asking. When we have had many denials we should be the more earnest in prayer, that the hindrance may be removed. Esther succeeded in her suit though she went without a call, and much more shall we if we boldly come unto the King of kings, from whom no sincere petitioner ever was dismissed unheard. If we knew the worst time for prayer had come, we ought still to pray. Come, my soul, get thee to thy chamber and seek the King's face, for thou hast great need.