FAITH
Acts 16:30-34; Hebrews 11:6; 3:14-19; 4:1,2;
It will be apparent from these scriptures that I would like to speak about believing and faith. We have been speaking today of things which are individual experiences, and I would like to continue, for the moment, on that line. I was confirmed in reading these scriptures by the reference to “all joy and peace in believing”, Rom.15:13. We have sung that hymn which we all know:-
‘Through the love of God our Saviour,
All will be well’. (Hymn 86)
I trust that there is no one who could not sing those words from their own heart, that ‘Through the love of God your Saviour, All will be well’. God is a Saviour God. He loves to save. He loves to grant forgiveness, and He wants to give you a hope, and assurance, and a fire in your soul which will be yours forever. How wonderful is that assurance, that ‘All will be well’.
I want to speak of some of the other things referred to in our hymn, and about our belief and our journey down here. All of us, I trust, have believed, and do believe in our Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ. Along the way, as our hymn writer has drawn attention to, there are many things which come in which would challenge, maybe not our belief in our Lord Jesus as our Saviour, but in what is being worked out today. There were those to whom the Lord Jesus asked, “Will ye also go away?”, John 6:67. I am not suggesting that there is anyone here who is thinking that they might go away, but there is one who tempts us every day of the week to do so. Satan’s activity in every one of us would be to dull our belief that the Lord Jesus is able to take us, individually and collectively, through to the end – but He is able. We enjoy singing this hymn. We have sung it so often. I challenge myself – do I believe what I have sung? ‘Though we pass through tribulation’. Tribulation may be the difficulties in my life, things that I would rather were not there. God has not promised to take those things away. One could write,
‘God hath not promised skies ever blue,
Flower strewn pathways all our lives through’. (Miss A.J. Flint)
But she then wrote,
‘But God hath promised strength for the day ...
unfailing sympathy, undying love’.
God will see us through but we must trust Him. We are left here in a pathway of exercise, and that is deliberate on God’s part, that He may keep our senses attuned, and that we might be trusting Him in dependence every step of the way. Young ones, older ones, do not fear the tribulation. Do not fear the difficulties. What God allows He allows, but let us have our faith in Him. He is able to see us through.
We sang ‘Faith can sing through days of sorrow’. How about your faith, dear friend? Is it sufficient for the sorrows that may come into your own pathway? Faith can sing through days of sorrow, ‘All will be well’. And the writer of Hymn 86 concludes with relying on the Father’s love, and Jesus supplying every need,
‘Or in living, or in dying,
All must be well’.
I trust your hope and your faith is in Him. My desire is that our faith may be strengthened as we speak about these things together.
Each of us is on a journey. What will occur along the pathway here is something that only God knows. We do not know. One brother of old, soon after he was converted, wrote an article entitled ‘The Peace of God’. You can understand that; a young man who had just come to know the Lord Jesus as Saviour, and to know the peace of God. I trust everyone in this room knows the peace of God, to have something given to you that you will find nowhere else, the peace that comes from God alone. That dear man put pen to paper and wrote about it. Many years later, at the end of his life, the last article that brother wrote was on ‘The God of Peace’. He began with that which was his, which God had given him. After years on the journey of experience with God, he put pen to paper to write about the God of peace. That is the journey on which you and I are. That is why we are here; God has left us here that we may learn and prove Him along this journey. Miss Bowly, the writer of Hymn 86, has given us the flavour of this. Our pathway will lead through many things that will befall us, but our trust is in God, our trust is in the Saviour, and He will see us through. I hope we are all ready to use the faith which God has given us, because with God all things are possible. The jailor had nothing left in his life, but the word was very simple, “Believe on the Lord Jesus… thou and thy house”. And then in verse 34 he “rejoiced with all his house, having believed in God”.
In Hebrews 11 it says, “But without faith it is impossible to please him”. Faith is essential if the Holy Spirit is to work within us. The Spirit cannot work freely in a soul where there are doubts. It is an essential foundation for the Spirit to be able to work in our souls, that we have faith in the present activities of our Saviour God. “But without faith it is impossible to please him. For he that draws near to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them who seek him out”. Do you believe that God is a rewarder of them who seek Him out? I do not think that there is anybody in this room who does not believe that God is, but do you believe that He is a rewarder of them that seek Him out? Can you speak about it? I feel challenged myself. What can I say about it? “A rewarder of them who seek him out.” God loves us to seek Him out, to confide in Him, to be close to Him. The footnote ‘f’; to ‘believe on’ in Acts 16, if followed through, refers to confidence and faith; confidence in God, faith in what He is able to do. God loves us to confide in Him.
Solomon gives us in the book of Proverbs four things which are wonderful advice for the journey of which I have spoken. “Confide in Jehovah with all thy heart”, Prov.3:5. Tell Him everything. God is there; He is able, He knows the end from the beginning. Speak to Him about your exercises. Speak to Him about the tribulation. Speak to Him about the sorrow. Speak to Him about all that is in your heart; God wants to know. Is that not wonderful? The Creator, the One who has this world in His hands, the One who holds your future, He wants to know what you are thinking about. He wants you to confide in Him. Confide in Him with all your heart. Not just occasionally; pour out your affections and all that is in your life to God. He longs for you to do it. Then “lean not unto thine own intelligence”. How difficult we find that is, even if some of us know very little. Then “in all thy ways acknowledge him”. Maybe that is one of the most difficult of these four things. In all your ways, acknowledge God. How can we do that if we do not have faith in Him and in His present activities? How can we do that if we do not believe that He is able to bring us through? He can bring us through individually in bright and living testimony and also collectively. God is able for these things, dear brethren. Whatever Satan may bring, whatever tribulations may befall us, God is able to bring us through. Then it says, “and he will make plain thy paths”. Is there anyone here who does not find it very attractive that God desires to make our path plain? Have we the faith that God will do that? The instructions are there. They are very, very simple. Confide in Him, lean not unto your own intelligence, in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make plain your paths. It is in order that we might learn more of God, that self may disappear, and God in His goodness, and Christ in all His glory, may shine more brightly on us on our pathway here. ‘Happy still in God confiding’ – it seems to me that our hymn writer deduced that happiness amongst the people of God was linked very closely to confiding in Him.
The disciples said to the Lord Jesus, “Give more faith to us”, Luke 17:5. I am sure everyone in this room knows what it is like to have this desire within us – ‘Lord, give me more faith’. I do not think that Scripture tells us that God will give us more faith. What Scripture does tell us is that “God has dealt to each a measure of faith”, Rom.12:3. I trust there is no one here who does not know that if God has given you something, He will have given you enough. It is characteristic of Him that He gives in sufficiency and in abundance. And dear friend, I can assure you that God has given you enough faith for the journey, but you must use it, I must use it. We have spoken about hope. We have spoken about those steps in faith. We must take those steps, dear brethren. We must set forward in faith, and God will reassure us, and God will help us through. Consider the example of the centurion. What does the Lord say? “Not even in Israel have I found so great faith”, Matt.8:10. There was a man who exercised the faith that God had given him. Then when the disciples were in that boat with the Lord Jesus, and the storm arose and He was asleep, they say, “Master, master, we perish”. What does He say? “Where is your faith?”, Luke 8:24,25. The Lord would ask us that today. As we contemplate all that enters into our lives, all the things that concern us and the exercises we carry, He would say, Where is your faith? What do they say? “Who then is this that, … even … the winds and the water … obey him?”, Luke 8:25. The Lord Jesus is able to bring us through. We must trust Him. As another hymn writer says, ‘Simply trust Him, that is all’ (Hymn 439). We often speak of that in a gospel setting, but I am thinking about it in relation to the many, many tests and trials and tribulations that come along the way. Let us trust Him and use the faith that we have been given.
To another man, the Lord said, “According to your faith, be it unto you”, Matt.9:29. God measures how we use it. The Lord had said to that man, “Do ye believe that I am able to do this?”. Do we believe? The man said, “Yea, Lord”. Another man said, “I believe, help mine unbelief”, Mark 9:24. The Lord helped him. That is the gracious Man we have to do with, One who will help us in the exercise of our faith.
We read in Hebrews 3, “For we are become companions of the Christ if indeed we hold the beginning of the assurance firm to the end”. Are we not attracted and stirred by the thought of being a companion of the Lord Jesus? Is it only a prospect for you, dear fellow believer, or is it a present reality to go through life as a companion of our Lord Jesus? “For we are become companions of the Christ if indeed we hold the beginning of the assurance firm to the end”. The resource that we have in the Holy Spirit, with all His greatness and glory, would give us strength for this journey. He would help us in holding forth the beginning of that assurance firm to the end. The Holy Spirit would love to do that. And yet all of us, I suppose, would have to admit that at times we fail. When we think of our journey, we often think of Moses and the children of Israel going through the wilderness. There are very few servants of the Old Testament spoken of so richly in the New as Moses, but if you read in the Old Testament you find that even Moses, going along the way, became despondent. He said to God, ‘All these people are murmuring and who am I?’ (Exod.3:11). The people asked to eat, and God said that He would provide. Moses asked, How are You going to provide all these people with meat? He became despondent. He did not believe, but God showed him. I do not call attention to Moses’ failures other than for us to receive comfort, that even one so great as he faltered along the way. What did Moses prove? That God was able! He was able to provide meat for those people in abundance. We become companions of the Christ if we hold the beginning of the assurance firm to the end.
We have many examples in Scripture. Think of Nehemiah; he lived in a difficult day, vastly more difficult than the day in which we are. God put it in his heart to go and rebuild the city of Jerusalem. God would put it in each of our hearts, dear brethren, to hold firm the assurance to the end. There were those who tried to stop Nehemiah. There were those who sought to distract him, to tell him that it could never be done, but that man’s face was set. His trust was in God; He would help him in the work that Nehemiah was given to do. What did he say as to those people? He said, “for the people had a mind to work”, Neh.4:6. I trust every one of us has a mind to work in the things that belong to our Lord Jesus, and are ready for what He would ask us to do. Let us trust Him, the One who is able to complete all things to His own glory and praise.
Think of those sisters, five daughters of Zelophehad, in the wilderness. Their father had died and the inheritance was there, but they had no means to secure it. They were in difficult times. What is seen in those five women is faith. They laid hold of that which belonged to them, and they would not let it go. I trust each one of us has something of the spirit of those five sisters within us. It says that they went and stood at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and they spoke. “Give unto us a possession”, Num.27:4. They reached out for it in faith – a wonderful example, in difficult times, of a soul reaching out to God in His goodness that He should come in in blessing. Jehovah said, “The daughters of Zelophehad speak right”, Num.27:7. How wonderful is God’s willingness to come out in blessing. Other difficulties come a few chapters later, but are resolved. The daughters marry within the tribe, and the inheritance is preserved. Such is God’s way. Whatever we turn to, beloved brethren, whatever the issues are that come into our lives, do we have the hope and the trust that God is able?
‘Faith can sing through days of sorrow,
All, all is well’.
I read in John 7. It touches something of the last of those three things of which our hymn writer spoke – ‘Steadfast, through the Spirit’s guiding’. What we have been speaking of is absolutely vital. If faith is to be rewarded, and to be answered, it must include faith in the work of the Holy Spirit. We used to have an elderly brother in London, long since with the Lord, who would often remind us of the need for faith in the Spirit. I believe it would link with sowing to the Spirit. We must have faith that He is able to provide what we need, as we go to Him for guidance, for care, for understanding, for direction. The Holy Spirit is able to receive of the things of Christ and announce them to us. So here it says, “He that believes on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water”. These things go together, our faith and trust in Christ, and our belief in what the Holy Spirit is able to do. He is willing to help us to progress along the pathway, whatever may come in on the way, standing faithful here as a testimony to our Lord Jesus. We can be ready for whatever God would allow to befall us, in the knowledge that in what He allows, He is able to see us through. Beloved brethren, He is able, and as we sang at the beginning, ‘All must be well’.
I feel I have spoken very simply, but I desire that our belief and our faith in the Lord Jesus may be strengthened because He is able for every contingency. May we trust Him. May we prove Him. God loves to be proved. He loves us to find in Himself the answer to all things. Let us do so, for His name’s sake.
Address at 3 day meetings, Birmingham
A.A. Croot
28 October 2016