LIVING BY FAITH
D. Robertson
Habakkuk 2: 4 (from “but”); Deuteronomy 8: 2, 3; Galatians 5: 25
These scriptures all refer to the thought of living, and the verse we read in Habakkuk says,
“but the just shall live by his faith”. I have been thinking of this matter of faith, and it is interesting how it is put here, the just shall live by his faith. It is a personal matter. A similar expression is quoted in the New Testament at least three times, but Habakkuk gives this peculiar touch to it, “the just shall live by his faith”. It is a precious matter to be the possessor of faith. Scripture says it is not the portion of all (2 Thessalonians 3: 2). It has been said it is light from God operative in the soul. It is a very great matter that in my soul and yours light from God should be operating there.
What I am thinking about is not exactly faith in relation to our righteousness before God for salvation, but the principle of faith entering into our daily lives. Elsewhere it says that the just shall live by faith (Romans 1: 17); that is, Christians are not living as ordinary people live, their horizon is not bound like the horizon of people who do not know God, but living on the principle of faith would mean that our outlook is governed by the fact that we know God and that our resource is in God. It is a very testing matter, beloved brethren, as to how we live. O that it could be said of me that I live on the principle of faith! This very precious touch, “the just shall live by his faith”, is an active matter. I sometimes think that many believers view faith as a kind of gift given to them by God at conversion and never again active, but I believe it is God’s intention to sustain the believer in the energy of active faith.
It is a great privilege to be possessed of faith. Peter writes to those who have “like precious faith” (2 Peter 1: 1), that is, similar faith. We are here today in the company of persons of whom it can be said that we have “like precious faith”. It governed the Lord Jesus in His path here, He truly was the Man of faith. He set it on and He completed it. Faith was seen in perfection there, He was the Man of faith; one speaks reverently for it says, “I was cast upon thee from the womb”, Psalm 22: 10. How precious to think of that, indeed it is food to think of it. We have been speaking of that today, how the Lord Jesus, especially in Luke’s presentation, is holy food for the soul. So we can think of His faith. Even on the cross, as He hung there, they were compelled to say that He trusted in God. At that solemn time the testimony was rendered, no doubt by profane lips, that He trusted in God. He was the Man of faith.
It is encouraging to read that the apostles asked that their faith might be increased (Luke 17: 5). So faith can be increased and it may be we need to be revived and increased in our faith in God. It enters into the whole structure of the believer’s life, because through divine grace we have been brought into a system of faith. Christianity is a system of faith, not a system of sight. When the millennium dawns it will be a system of sight, all will be there to be seen.
Christianity is a system of faith, it is called indeed, “God’s dispensation, which is in faith” (1 Timothy 1: 4), that is, God is operating in men and women and introducing them on the principle of faith to the secrets of His mind. The secrets of His mind are not displayed in this day as they will be in the world to come, but faith is the means God would use to bring us into the system where His secrets are known now. The scripture says, “By faith we apprehend that the worlds were framed by the word of God”, Hebrews 11: 3. The great scientific investigations do not mean much to Christians. We can accept the fact that the worlds were framed by the word of His power on the principle of faith.
I want to speak of it as it relates practically to us in our everyday lives, first of all in relation to our circumstances, because we live in a day when there are peculiar tests in the circumstances of men and of the saints. There used to be a term used amongst men, job security. It no longer exists. We feel for each other in these things and especially for our younger brethren. To speak simply, a young man is about to be married and he loses his job.
What does it mean? It emphasises in one way the need for faith, because while we cannot speak of job security we can surely speak about security with God. There is nothing insecure about God. You may say, Well my faith is very weak. I would agree that mine is too. But what encourages me is that it is not the strength of our faith that matters, it is the strength of the One that your faith is placed in that matters, it is God. The word of scripture is, “Have faith in God”,
Mark 11: 22. Circumstances are difficult, but they have been difficult before. Some of us are old enough to remember something of the years of the depression. These were difficult years, but God saw His people through, and God will see us through again. I am not speaking presumptuously, I am speaking in some experimental way. God will see us through, indeed He is pledged to see us through. Mr. Taylor said somewhere that God can look after your affairs better than you can look after them yourself. What a God He is! Can you tell me one reason why you should not trust God? If there is a reason it is in yourself, it is not in God.
God can be trusted. Moses said, “Ascribe greatness unto our God! He is the Rock, his work is perfect”, Deuteronomy 32: 3, 4. You say, I feel tested in my faith by my circumstances and sometimes feel almost overwhelmed. The Psalmist felt that way too, and he said,” when my heart is overwhelmed: thou wilt lead me on to a rock which is too high for me”, Psalm 61: 2.
That is God, beloved brethren. May we be persons who know what it is to have faith in God, not mere professed faith, but active faith.
This man Habakkuk had it so long ago, and he speaks of his circumstances in a most affecting way. We could just read a few verses at the end of the book where he says, “For though the fig-tree shall not blossom, Neither shall fruit be in the vines; The labour of the olive-tree shall fail, And the fields shall yield no food; The flock shall be cut off from the fold. And there shall be no herd in the stalls” (Habakkuk 3: 17). What a catalogue, we might say, of tests in his circumstances! Habakkuk says. The just shall live by his faith, and he has it; he says, “Yet I will rejoice in Jehovah, I will joy in the God of my salvation. Jehovah, the Lord, is my strength” (Habakkuk 3: 18, 19). I would like to encourage the brethren to have faith in God as to their circumstances, especially younger men and women, and the boys and girls growing up too. Things will not get any easier in this world, and Christians have no visible means of support; we have no trade unions to fight for us, no
professional associations, none of these associations of men who operate for the benefit of their members. It might be said that we are very vulnerable. We are very safe, more safe than with all the associations in the world, we have God to care for us. May young men and women learn early what it is to have faith in God.
I also wanted to speak about faith for continuance, because we have been brought into the path of the testimony and we are tested as to continuance. God is set to see us through the whole way. God has not brought us into the path of testimony to take us half way, or even three-quarters of the way. God has brought us into the faith system, into the testimony to take us the whole way. He is committed to that. Paul says, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded”, 2 Timothy 1: 12. What a thing it is to have a persuasion! Persuasion comes through experience, it is not the fruit of reasoning. A person comes to a persuasion because they have proved God. He says, “I ... am persuaded that he is able to keep for that day the deposit I have entrusted to him”. Paul had put a deposit there in the keeping of God, and God would keep it for him and keep Paul in relation to it. Paul says, “My God”, think of Paul being able to speak of that, “My God shall abundantly supply all your need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus”, Philippians 4: 19.
You take Simon, like ourselves failing often, but what he proved was that the Lord’s service was going on in relation to his faith. We may feel we have little faith to continue, but the intercession of Christ goes on all the time. He said to Simon at that point, “Satan has demanded to have you, to sift you as wheat; but I have besought for thee”. Think of that precious word, “I have besought for thee that thy faith fail not; and thou, when once thou hast been restored, confirm thy brethren”, Luke 22: 31, 32. There was no doubt in the Lord’s mind that Simon would be secured to continue. That is what we would be set for, beloved brethren, set to continue. I trust there is no one here who because of discouragement is thinking of turning aside. The Lord is beseeching. Think of His intercession, and we too have concern for one another that we might have power to continue in the testimony. I trust our faith may be strengthened, that it may be increased, that it may be active, and that it may be centred on God and the greatness of His resource. Think of the power of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, all available to us that we might continue as the word says, “but the just shall live by his faith”.
Now I come to Deuteronomy 8, and another matter comes in here as to living, “man doth not live by bread alone, but by everything that goeth out of the mouth of Jehovah doth man live”.
The Lord uses this scripture in Matthew and in Luke; in Luke it says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God” (Luke 4: 4). I think “every word of God” involves that God is able to bring in His word to strengthen us, to sustain us in every circumstance.
The Lord Himself proved it in what we call the temptations. I think He was strengthened by God. Satan tested the Lord, but he was testing One who was perfect in faith. He said, as it were, You are in the wilderness here, there is no bread for You here. The Lord says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God”. Matthew says, “by every word which goes out through God’s mouth” (Matthew 4: 4), a most intimate thought, as if God in His tender consideration, would bring in just the intimate word that we need to sustain us in the test of the moment. The word is not only light for the moment but He gives us that touch of strengthening through the word which is food for the soul.
Moses in this section is referring to the time when they received the manna. They found that God had just what they needed for that time. God brought in a new resource, a resource that the people had never heard about nor had their fathers heard about it, but God had that resource and He brought in the manna from heaven. Oh what wonderful food that speaks of, it speaks of the perfect dependence of the Lord Jesus Christ on God; what food that is!
There is not much time to go into all I would like to say, but you can look through the whole of Scripture and see how this matter of “every word” is illustrated. When God put new responsibility on man in Noah’s time, He gave him new food, He gave him flesh to eat; he was set to govern, a position that was never given to man in responsibility before. God gives him food that will strengthen him in this new situation. We may think of Elijah when his faith wilted and he lay down to sleep. (I would hesitate to say anything against Elijah, a man who is to be admired because of his faithfulness in recalling the people in that day, to the rights of God). Then it says, “an angel touched him, and said to him, Arise, eat! And he looked, and behold, at his head was a cake, baked on hot stones, and a cruse of water”. Just where it was needed, it was available. God had provided the food; and then it says he “lay down again.
And the angel of Jehovah came again the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise, eat; for the journey is too great for thee”, 1 Kings 19: 5–7. Think of God’s consideration for him! It says, “And he arose, and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights” (1 Kings 19: 8). That is the kind of food that God provides, it is every word of God. Whatever the situation, whatever the circumstance, it is every word of God. God can bring in the needed touch.
Many have been faced with a situation where they have found that God is able to bring in the word, and bring it in just when it is needed to strengthen. In the shipwreck Paul exhorted them to take food “for this has to do with your safety”, Acts 27: 34. We need food for safety, we need food for preservation. If we are going to stay the course of the testimony we need food. I believe a great deal of wavering at the present time is because of being impoverished in soul, it is because we are not feeding properly. One would exhort the brethren to take food, it has to do with our safety. Then the most wonderful food of all is the Lord’s supper; what food that is, what holy food! The Lord says, “Take, eat” in Matthew 26: 26, and “Take this” in Mark 14: 22; it is to be eaten, it is to affect our constitution. Week by week we are provided with that holy food; it is the presentation of a Man who was here entirely for the will of God. Think of feeding on that kind of manhood. I just touch these things briefly to show that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God”. God has the word for us and He is faithful to provide it and see that we have it just when we need it. Men want a system of materialism where everything is sure, but we come into situations where we find the natural resource is not sufficient. Those are the situations we come into as the people of God in our individual, in our household, and in our collective exercises; we come into situations in which God alone can sustain us. He has a word for every moment and we find truly, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God”.
Now I want to finish with a word on Galatians where it is a question of living by the Spirit as it says, “If we live by the Spirit”. What does it mean to live by the Spirit? We have talked about living by faith, living by the word of God, but think of living by the Spirit. I think it means that we are held in the consciousness of our relationships with God. There is nothing more important for both the older and younger brethren than to be in conscious relationship with God. It is not enough just to turn to God when we need God. He will not fail us. He is a gracious God, but we need to learn what it is to “live by the Spirit”; not only to go to God in times of need, but to know what it is to retire into the presence of God for enjoyment. Have you ever had that experience? There may be no pressure, no immediate need to ask for, but you can go there and enjoy the company of God. That is “living by the Spirit”, a wonderful matter. I cannot say more about it than that
because I know so little about it, but it is something very wonderful, and very much needed by all of us, that we learn what it is to “live by the Spirit” in the precious, holy, inward enjoyment of our relations with God.
It is in this very book, Galatians, where we are told about the Spirit of God’s Son being in our hearts and He is crying, “Abba, Father”, Galatians 4: 6. In Romans the believer cries it (Romans 8: 15), “Abba, Father” is a term, I believe, that can be only used in conscious enjoyment of inward relations with God.
The secret of Christianity is in our living relationships with divine Persons. The Lord Jesus said, “As the living Father has sent me and I live on account of the Father, he also who eats me shall live also on account of me”, John 6: 57. Christianity is not merely grappling with problems and everyday exigencies. Christianity is enjoying what God is as revealed in Christ, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. May we know what it is to “live by the Spirit”, because the result surely will be as it says, “let us walk also by the Spirit”. The only power for right walk in responsibility is to live by the Spirit. If we are not living by the Spirit we will falter. We need the power of this inward enjoyment to sustain us in the responsible path.
These are the things I had in mind and I trust that the word might be useful to us all and that God may bless it.
Address at Edinburgh
18 June 1994