FAITH AND SENSE
FAITH AND SENSE
There have always been, as far as we know, two lights, since the call of Abram, or since a definite path was prescribed for the people of God on the earth, one of faith, and the other of sense. There have been two companies, both professing to follow the one path or rule; but one, however feeble, clung to it in faith, while the other, though professing to adhere to it, yet continually betrayed that they were doing so because they considered it the right thing, without any exercise of faith as to it. Let us then gather from Scripture how these two companies are distinguished the one from the other, the traits and eventualities which mark them. In faith, Abram answers to the call of God. It does not say that Lot had faith, for faith is counting upon God, but he went with Abram. These two were types of the two lines which, as far as we know, have continued ever since. Abram counted on God, and though he turned [p. 78] into Egypt because of the famine, he was restored, and entered on the path of faith again. Lot accompanied Abram into Egypt, and returned again with him to Canaan; he evidently thought it the right course. But when it came to be a question which side he was to go, we see a marked difference between these two, the man of faith and the man of sense. Abram, though the senior, and the one naturally entitled to make an election, surrenders it, and Lot avails himself of it, and chooses the well-watered plain, which his good sense told him was the best place.
Faith looks to God, and waits for Him; this marks one. The other, while accepting the path, grasps everything which natural wisdom or good sense can lay hold of or utilise, without openly and distinctly abandoning the path. The fact that it is sense, and not faith, which influences is more apparent at every step. The wonder is what could have induced a man without faith to enter on such a course. But it is this, the judgment may be convinced of the rightness of a course, without the faith which counts on God. In this way, many a christian has been induced to leave the establishment for some sect which promised to secure him the field or liberty his intelligence demanded. What really was the difference between Moses and Aaron, two brothers bound together by all natural ties, and now appointed by the Lord to the same service, and both largely acquainted with the work of the Lord? Truly Moses derived everything directly from the Lord, and then shared His communications with Aaron, who was the public expounder and herald of them. Both were in the same path; but Moses, as it was shown eventually, was in it in simple dependence on God, while Aaron, who was the more prominently connected with it, in the moment of difficulty gave way entirely to the dictates of his senses, and declared that he had no faith in the nature of the God whose word, accompanied with great signs and mighty wonders, he had so often proclaimed. Could any divergence as to [p. 79] judgment and acts be greater and more marked than that between these two brothers, when one, Moses, came from the mount to vindicate God, and Aaron quieted the people with a molten calf, before which they proclaimed, “These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt”!
One could hardly believe that such an unaccountable and painful breach could arise between two brothers so closely bound together in the work of the Lord. Alas, the fact proves to us that there are two guides where one might least expect to find them, and that no amount of light, or co-operation of work or service, can prevent the great moral gulf between them; for one has faith in God, and the other, in the hour of trial, turns to his senses and the exercise of his natural ingenuity. The man of sense in the right path will command a greater company of followers, because the natural mind is swayed by natural force. The man of faith can only address the faith of others, and he influences only in proportion as there is faith.
We are taught a similar lesson in connection with the twelve spies. They all had the same service; they had the same opportunities and the same light and knowledge; and yet, when it came to definite practice, ten of them, while dilating on the good of the land and its unquestionable excellencies, had no faith in God. They brought up an evil report of the land, declared that it was “a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature”. They had plenty of natural sense and judgment, they observed things as they are on earth and with man, as natural sense must do — the keener it is, the more so. Faith counts on God, and sees Him above and beyond all that man is; and hence Caleb can say, “If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land”. The great instruction for us is that one can see the good and beauty of the truth, in company too with those who have simple faith in God, and yet not only have no heart for it, but actually become [p. 80] hinderers of it to many, by their fear and want of faith. At all events, it is very evident that association in the same service and the profession of similar ideas about truth do not ensure divine union and co-operation; but though thus openly and avowedly found together, yet there are two companies, one treading the path of faith, it may be weakly, and numerically less than the other one that judges of everything by natural sense. A judgment by natural sense is good and influential, as the variety of circumstances are skilfully combined and gauged in order that one might utilise them. Faith views the circumstances just as clearly, but rests in the assurance that God will effect His pleasure in spite of them.
All Israel were appointed to cross the Jordan and possess the land of Canaan. Two and a half tribes diverged from the rest. They had the same calling and the same inheritance, and yet there were two companies. One, led by prudence and present gain, desired to settle on this side Jordan, though they consented and promised to go over and fight and secure Canaan for their brethren. They are on the same path and in the same service with their brethren, but their hearts and homes are elsewhere. They will suffer, even at the risk of their lives, to obtain the promised land for their brethren; but they are fixed in their purpose not to reside there, nor to enjoy it themselves. One is painfully reminded of their course in this day, when the heavenly portion is contended for by those who in life and practice declare that they have no intention of being practically dwellers there. What, we may well ask, beguiled them into such a strange inconsistent course? Why sacrifice so much for no gain? Simply because, guided by sense, they considered they had a better thing on this side Jordan.
Further on we see, in a still more painful and solemn way, disunion between those in one path, and belonging to one people, to Israel as a nation. Jeroboam, acting on his natural sense, set up calves in Bethel and in Dan, thinking by this cleverness to secure the kingdom to himself.
[p. 81] He disregarded and lost sight of what was due to God, in order to secure his own interests, and by his lack of faith precipitated the very thing he dreaded.
I need not trace this, as we might, all through the history of Israel; but it has been the same in the church. We get a remarkable instance of the two even in the same person in the case of Peter in Matthew 16, when he dropped from faith to sense. At one moment he had the clearest and fullest light: “flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven”. And shortly after, the Lord reproves him in the strongest terms: “Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men”. Here is the real cause of departure from the path of faith oneself, and of difference or divergence one from one another in the path avowedly common to both. Every one can understand the difference between one sect or denomination and another; but that Paul and Barnabas, once close companions, and advocates together of the same course, should differ and diverge from another, while retaining the common faith, is very painful and humbling. It must be traced to this, that one acted in faith, pleasing the Lord; the other was swayed by his feelings, by sense, and acted accordingly. The dissension which led to this unhappy breach sprang up between Paul and Peter, two apostles who were appointed to the one common work, co-builders together with God. What a warning voice it is to us when a Peter can be so under the influence of others as to swerve from the truth. “He withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision”; sense governed him, and not faith in God.
The last writing of the apostle Paul, 2 Timothy, tells of these two forces in a very marked way. He writes, “All they which are in Asia be turned away from me”. Doubtless they still held to the same ecclesiastical order as before. They did not set up any new form. They [p. 82] were not in any sense openly dissenters; but while accepting and avowing the same path as the apostle, they had turned away from the truth so specially committed to him. They doubtless considered it untenable, too high, utopian, and so on. Now this is the form of opposition and hindrance for which we are to be prepared in this day; the light accepted, the path approved of, but one part of the company struggling on as they have faith, the other part using every means within the reach of their senses to support the cause they are committed to. Both are assured that there is no other path or order for the church of God. They are clear as to light. Even those under the guidance of sense are as sure of the rightness of their profession as a Lot, or the ten spies, or the two and a half tribes; but, like them, they do not reach to the mind and purpose of God as to their calling. They are not spiritually in it. Their natural minds have been convinced that there is nothing so right and correct. Hence these two companies, like Moses and Aaron, go on together in great unanimity until a difficulty occurs which tests them, and then they are marked off; one has recourse to God in faith, the other turns to his natural resources; and then it is soon seen that one is of God, and the other of man.
One thing more. We have seen in our day, and we suffer from it on all sides, the lack of cohesion because of those two guides. If in the company or remnant there were only a simple purpose of heart to walk by faith, though its feebleness were apparent, yet there would be strength within, and true co-operation one with another, and a marked advance in the knowledge of God. Whereas now, those who seek to lay hold by faith of God’s purpose and calling are baffled and hindered by their companions, who cannot accept or engage in anything beyond the range of their senses. In heart, if not in word, they ridicule the idea of being a heavenly people; they regard the church more as an enclosure for converted souls than as the vessel of testimony in the earth, and [p. 83] consequently hold that evangelising is the one great work on which all the energies of every believer ought to be expended; and thus the great aim and testimony for the believer now is overlooked and supplanted. There is no opportunity or time, as it were, to teach and lead on souls to maintain that the state Christ is in is our state in this world, and the place He is in is our place, though we are still on earth; that the one simple calling of the church is that by each member of Christ’s body here He should be set forth and magnified where He is not.