READING: Heb. 4:1-13;
11:5-6.
I am going to speak for
a little while on the most difficult thing in the world,
that is, faith. So far as the Lord's people are
concerned, it can be truly said that the whole of their
life in every aspect - salvation in its first step and
every subsequent step, spiritual growth, spiritual
sustenance, spiritual victory, spiritual work and
service, fellowship with the Lord and ultimate glory is
all resolved into one thing and that one thing is faith.
Faith is the key to everything in our relationship to the
Lord. It is all just a question of faith - not faith as
something in itself, but faith in God. That is something
which has to be faced and as far as possible at any
point, settled; but it is not a thing which is settled
once and for all. There has to be a settlement made again
and again on this point. We are really continually
confronted with this question; in the presence of new
situations and trials and perplexities and seeming
contradictions, am I going to believe God or not, am I
going to repose faith in Him or not, am I going to trust
the Lord or not? That is true all the way along, and it
always will be so. And sometimes those testings are very,
very acute and severe. A brother wrote to me this week,
one who has been greatly used of the Lord in other lands
as well as in this one, who knows the Lord, and has a
very real walk with the Lord, and he just put this in his
letter. "It sometimes seems as though the Lord is a
thousand miles away and has no interest whatever in me.
It sometimes seems as though He has just cut me
off". You may think that is very extreme, but some
of you will not. You know quite well that such
experiences are true to the life of a child of God. I was
saying that this is something that has to be faced. That
is the life to which we are called. The Lord has not
covered it, has not veiled it, hidden it from us. We are
called unto a life of faith, and we had better face it;
and then we must, as far as possible, if we are going to
get through, settle it, for I repeat there is no step or
stage or aspect of the life of the child of God from
first to last, from the beginning to the end that is not
a matter of faith. Well, that is a fact, and let us be
quite honest about it, and quite frank with ourselves.
That is the situation. It will help to a very large
extent if we have looked this thing straight in the face
and not shelved it, not tried to evade it, but accepted
it.
A Key
to Faith
But we want to get
inside of this matter of faith, and here in this letter
to the Hebrews which is, as you know, from start to
finish, a letter on the matter of faith, we have amongst
others one very helpful clue and key to faith. It is in
this fourth chapter. You may not think that it really is
a matter of faith for it does not seem to lie on the face
of it, but when you examine it, you find that that is the
thing that it is touching - this strange, somewhat
technical language - "For the word of God is living
and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and
piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit".
You will notice that that statement begins with a 'for',
and that 'for' links you with Israel in the wilderness
failing to enter into rest. It is said that they had the
Gospel preached to them, but the word spoken did not
profit, not being mixed or united by FAITH. It did
not profit, not being united by FAITH. Then there
follows, "I sware in my wrath, they shall not enter
into my rest". They could not enter in because of
unbelief. Then more about the rest and their failure to
enter in, and then - 'FOR the word of God
divides between soul and spirit'. This is the key to
faith, or a key to faith. What is it? It is the conquest
of the soul, and that is said to explain the whole of the
wilderness failure and the subsequent not entering into
the rest.
You know what soul is.
I am not going to stay with soul and spirit very much. We
know in this matter that the soul is the self-conscious
life. By our souls we are conscious of ourselves and
other people and all that world of things here. Spirit is
just the God-conscious life. By our spirit we are
conscious of God Who is Spirit, and all that realm.
Self-conscious and God-conscious life, and because those
two things were not defined, put apart and recognised in
their difference, but allowed to overlap and bring about
a state of confusion, they did not enter in. They failed
because of unbelief. Well, what does that amount to? The
self-conscious life predominated, and the God-conscious
life did not predominate, was made subject and
subservient. In other words, for them, everything was a
matter of how self was affected by the situation and by
the prospect. You find them again and again full of
enthusiasm, full of zeal, full of what looked like real
interest in the things of the Lord. Oh yes, they were
going on, they were full of apparently real devotion to
the Lord. But that was when the situation was pleasing
them and when the prospect was presented so that it
brought a great sense of possibilities for them,
prospects for them, and their gratification. Oh, this is
fine, this is good; tell us more about this wonderful
land to which we are going, keep telling us about all its
glorious wonders, and resources; go on, we are most
interested in this, we are in for that! But it was all
soul, self-conscious self-interest, self-gratification.
And when there arose some situation, either present or in
relation to that prospect which made it a matter of
denying, sacrificing self, letting go self-interests, and
having to face up to a very difficult situation which was
going to be very costly to them, they were not so
interested; their zeal went, and unbelief rose up; it was
there and it rose up. They were not so concerned about
this thing now, it was not now for them. What was it for?
It was for the Lord ONLY first, and their
interests were entirely eclipsed. They would only come
into their inheritance when the Lord got His. The Lord
first; "Seek ye first his kingdom and his
righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto
you" (Matt. 6:33), and that putting first often
meant a letting go of everything personal.
Does not that get right
to the heart of this thing? What is disappointment to us?
Can we always say that disappointment which we think is
disappointment with the Lord and over His things is
because we did so much want the Lord to have what He
wanted irrespective of our interests at all; we were
prepared to let everything go, WE were not mixed
up in this thing somehow? In the Lord getting what He
wants, we see ourselves figuring in some way. It has to
be a very sharp instrument that gets in between those two
things and defines them because they are so mixed up. Is
it not true that faith wavers, weakens and ofttimes goes
right down and under when in the way of the Lord's
interests OURSELVES are entirely shut out?
What is the key to
faith then? The key to faith is this dividing of soul and
spirit, or, in other words, it is the complete abnegation
of self-interests - not in the Buddhist sense of
annihilation, but in the sense of God's interests
becoming positive and predominant. That is where the
battle of faith rages; it rages upon that ground always.
If we were so utterly - and not one of us really is - if
we were so utterly consumed for the Lord's interests
alone that no other interest in our lives had any
precedence or power to govern us, we would be in victory
all the time. It is this completely disinterested concern
for what the Lord wants that is the key to faith. If
Israel in the wilderness had taken this attitude - Well,
this is a very difficult experience, but the Lord is
after something, the Lord wants something, and He
evidently knows that that is the best way to get it; all
right, I am with Him, I may lose everything, I may suffer
the loss of all things, but it is what the Lord wants
that matters. The Lord wants us in that land; well, if it
means everything, to be there for the Lord's pleasure,
that is the thing that matters - if that had been their
attitude, do you think they would have journeyed forty
years in the wilderness round and round, do you think at
the border of the land they would have been turned back
to perish in the wilderness? You can see in the
consummation, that next generation which did go in, went
in on this matter of faith only. The whole story is based
upon faith.
There is the faith of
Rahab the harlot; her faith was the key to the land -
Jericho. Then there was the faith of going round six days
in silence and on the seventh the shout of faith, without
drawing a sword or turning a hand to do anything but go
round - ridiculous! It is all such utter faith. They went
up and possessed on that basis. That generation did enter
in because of faith, whereas the generation before did
not enter in because of unbelief. But this generation
went up because Joshua and Caleb had said, If the Lord
delight in us, He will bring us in (Num. 14:8). That is
the matter - it is the delight of the Lord, perfectly
disinterested concern for what the Lord wants, and that
is one of the most difficult things in life, to get this
self out of the way.
The
Result of Faith
(a)
Rest
So, just
finally, a little word on the result of faith. First of
all, of course, it is rest. We are not now thinking of
some future rest, some future land, whatever our hymn
writers have to say about it. You read again this fourth
chapter of the letter to the Hebrews, and you see
"We who have believed do enter into that rest".
Some of us have already entered in, says the Apostle. God
defines a day - it is not the future - and some of us do
enter in. This rest is not a time period, it is a state,
and the Apostle says here so clearly that entering into
rest is simply a matter of entering into a settled faith
in God. You know quite well that however doctrinal and
technical this may seem, it is very true. We can prove it
almost any day of our lives. When we get to the place
where we put ourselves and what we would like on one side
and accept the Lord's will - not just resignedly saying
Well, if that is what the Lord wants, I capitulate; if I
could have it otherwise, I would, but this is evidently
what the Lord wants: but if with all our heart we accept
it and enter into this with the Lord to co-operate with
Him, when we come there, rest enters into our souls, our
souls come to rest, on all sorts of things, small and
great.
(b)
Power with God
Then victory comes
because faith is power. If the Word of God is strong and
clear about one thing, it is about this. Oh, faith is
power. First of all, it is power with God. What is more
powerful with God than to be well-pleasing to Him, and
that is why I read about Enoch. "By faith Enoch was
translated that he should not see death; and he was not
found because God translated him: for he hath had witness
borne to him that before his translation he had been
well-pleasing unto God". That is all centred in, and
made to rest upon, faith. "Without faith it is
impossible to be well-pleasing unto him". Surely
that is our ambition above all - to be well-pleasing unto
Him. How? - to believe Him, to trust Him, to repose faith
in Him, to be well-pleasing unto Him. It is power with
God. We can consider that along the other line, that our
weakness with the Lord is always found in our
reservation, our question, our doubt, our uncertainty.
That is our weakness with God, and the Lord waits.
(c)
Power over Satan
It is victory over the
Devil because, if there is one thing that is the
playground of the Devil, it is unbelief, and if there is
one thing that the Devil is always seeking to promote and
maintain, it is unfaith. The hallmark of the Devil's work
from the Garden to the end is unbelief, doubt of God, to
question about God and God's ways - and God's motives.
That is where the Devil is coming all the time - with an
'if'. If this and if that. If God were what He says He
is, then this would not be. You know the thousands of
'ifs' and 'buts' of the Devil. The only power of victory
over the Devil is faith in God. We can use the language
of victory and power over Satan and it counts for
nothing. We must have a new position of power over the
enemy. The key is faith; it may be faith in the Blood, or
in the Name, or in the Lord, but it is faith.
(d)
Power over the World
It is power over the
world. "This is the victory that hath overcome the
world, even our faith" (1 John 5:4). The world in
this sense is that whole system and order and atmosphere
and attitude of things which must have the seen, and the
present. What is the mark of the world? It must see, it
must have now. Anything that is unseen and not present is
utterly outside of the mentality of the world, and we
know how much of the world there is in our nature and the
battle is there. Faith overcomes that world that is in
our own natures and around us. "The things which are
seen are temporal: but the things which are not seen are
eternal" (2 Cor. 4:18). Faith has to do with those
things.
We could talk for many
hours on the matter of faith. Please do not think I am
laying down the law to you. God knows the battle in all
of our hearts on this matter and how true we know this to
be in our own experience. We simply talk to one another
solemnly. We shall always have to fall down before Him
and say, Lord, increase our faith! There will be many
times when we shall say, Lord, I have not faith for that,
I have not faith to face this, to accept this. It is a
matter of a new dealing with the Lord on this question of
faith. There is the fact, it has to be faced, to be
settled, to be resolved again and again. Everything
depends upon it - the Victory in every realm, going on
with the Lord, getting through to what God has purposed.
It is all this matter of faith in God, and thereby being
well-pleasing unto Him. "He that cometh to God must
believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them
that seek after him" (Heb. 11:6). Lord, increase our
faith!
First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, May-June 1945, Vol 23-3