Faith No Fancy (8)

A second reason why so few question their faith is men's settling themselves on unsound evidences and principles of peace that will not bear them through before God. I do not say that they have nothing to say in words for themselves, but that all they have to say will be no ground to prove their faith. It will be found at best to be but a lie, as it is said of that man in Isaiah 44:20, “He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?” He may have a seeming reason for his faith, but it is no reason indeed.

If any of you were going to die, what reason have you by which to prove your believing? Some will say, “God has always been good, kind, and gracious to me; I was in many straits and difficulties, and I prayed and had many deliverances.” Thus all the ground of your faith is but temporal favors and deliveries, which is even as if Israel should have made their receiving of temporal deliverances and their acknowledging them, and having some sort of faith of them, to be ground enough to prove their receiving of Jesus Christ savingly. There is a doleful proof of the unsoundness of this ground in Psalm 78: “When He slew them, then they sought Him: and they returned and inquired early after God. And they remembered that God was their Rock, and the High God their Redeemer” (Psalm 78:34-35). They looked to God's past favors for them when they were in the wilderness and at the Red Sea, and they believed that they could do so still. “Nevertheless they did flatter Him with their mouth, and they lied unto Him with their tongues. For their heart was not right with Him, neither were they stedfast in His covenant” (Psalm 78:36-37), whereupon He destroyed them, and through their unbelief they did not enter into God's rest.

There may be many temporal favors and deliverances, and these acknowledged, too, and yet no receiving of Christ for making our peace with God, for removing the quarrel between Him and us, and for making us cease from sin. Consider if it be a good ground to plead with God upon, to say to Him, “Lord, Thou must bring me to heaven, because I was in sickness, and Thou raised me up; I was in this or that strait, and under this or that cross, and Thou carried me through and brought me out of it.” The Lord will say to such that have no more to say, “You had so many evidences of My power, but you sinned still.” Yet this will be all the pleading and reasoning that will be found with many of you, and the sad reply you will meet with from God.

A third reason is men's giving an external countenance to ordinances, and their formal going about them. They think they have faith because they attend church, and are not open contemners and disregarders of the ordinances as some others are; they pray, they read, they hear, etc. It seems that something like the persuasion of those spoken of in Luke 13 is built upon. “Lord,” say they, “we have heard Thee preach, and have eaten and drunk in Thy presence.” It is not simply that they heard Christ preach, for many heard Him preach who stoned Him, but that, when others stoned Him, they followed Him and were not openly profane, nor professed contemners of Him and His preaching, as these others were.

Such words fall sometimes from your mouths. You will probably say, what would we have of you? You are not profane, you wait on ordinances, and live like your neighbors; and you content yourselves with that! Alas! it is a poor, yea, a doleful fruit of ordinances and of your attendance upon them if there be more security, more presumption, and desperate hazarding on the wrath of God, and less sense of the quarrel between Him and you on that ground.

Fourthly, men hope, even such a hope, that contrary to the nature of true hope, will make the most part of you ashamed. You think you believe because you hope you believe; you think that you will get mercy because you think you hope in God's mercy; and you will not believe anything to the contrary, not so much as think that you may be deceived. The opinion men have of obtaining mercy that is maintained without any ground but their vain hope, is the most common, the most unreasonable, and the most prejudicial evil among the professors of this gospel. Many are like those spoken of in Isaiah 57:10, “Thou hast found the life of thine hand; therefore thou wast not grieved.” They have a faith and a hope of their own making, and this keeps them off so that the Word of God takes no hold on them.

We preach that you are by nature at enmity with God, and that your peace and reconciliation through Jesus Christ has to be made, but you are deaf, for you think your peace is made already; and but few are sensible of a quarrel with God so as to listen to His Word as to the ministry of reconciliation. This is wondered at (in a manner) by the Lord Himself, where we have a people whose way is very unlike the gospel: “The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? none evil can come upon us” (Micah 3:11) . It is not for real believing that they are charged, but for their confidently asserting their believing when there was no ground for it.

So it is with many. They will say they hope to escape hell and to have their sins pardoned and to get to heaven, and they believe it will be so, when in the meantime there is no ground for it, but clear ground to the contrary.

A fifth ground is men's spiritual and practical ignorance of the righteousness of God, whereof the apostle says, “For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God” (Romans 10:3). What I mean is this: people's being ignorant of their natural condition, of the spirituality of God's law, what it requires, and of the way of faith, and of the command of believing and the nature of it. It is from the ignorance of these three things, namely, of the mischief that is in them by nature, of the spirituality of the law, and of the spirituality of faith and of the exercise of faith, that they sleep on in security and think they have faith when they have it not. Though sometimes they will admit their faith is weak, yet they cannot be beaten from it but that they believe; their faith rises and falls as their security does.

This the apostle makes clear from his own experience, where he says that before his conversion he was a living man, but after his conversion he began to think himself nothing but a dead and lost man (Romans 7:9). The reason is that before his conversion he knew not himself, he knew not the law, nor the nature of the covenant of grace. “Before the law came,” says he, “I was alive.” He knew not the spiritual meaning of the law, and therefore he thought he observed it, and so thought himself sure of heaven and had not doubts nor disputings concerning his interest in God. “But,” says he, “when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. I saw myself then to be lost and gone, and in everything guilty. That which I thought had been humility, I saw to be pride; that which I took for faith, I found to be presumption and unbelief; and my holiness I found to be hypocrisy.” Not that his sin grew more upon him, but the sin that before was veiled was now discovered and stared him in the face.

It is a sad, yet a most real truth: the good believing (as many of you call it) and the faith that you have is a surer ground of your alienation from God and of your unbelief than any other thing you have can be a ground whereupon to conclude that you have faith and are good friends with God. You are yet alive, strangers to God, strangers to yourselves, strangers to the spiritual meaning of the law and to the exercise of faith. If you would set yourselves to ponder seriously this one consideration, I think you might be somewhat convinced of it. Do you not see many that understand more of God than you do, and that are more tender in their walk than you are, who are yet more loath, strained, and afraid to assert their faith and confidence than you are? This is the reason of it; they see their sin, and the spirituality of the law, and the nature of faith, and are dead to the law; but you are yet alive in your own conceit.

Do you or can you think that much praying, reading, meditating, and tenderness in men's walk will weaken faith and occasion doubting? Or is it not rather likely that faith will be more confirmed by these than by the neglect of them? How is it then that you are so strong in your faith, when they find themselves so weak and doubting? Or have you an infused faith without the means? Or does God deal with you in a more indulgent way than He uses to deal with His people? How is it then that these of whom you must admit that they are more tender than you are, cannot almost name faith or assert their confidence in God without trembling and fear that they presume; and yet you dare very confidently to assert your faith without any hesitation, though you live carnally and without fear?

Do not many of you ask in wonder, “What ails some people? What need they be so much troubled, and why do they stand in need of some to pray for them and with them? Why don't they believe?” You, meanwhile, need no such thing, and all the reason is that you assure yourselves you believe and think that the questioning of your security would be the very undoing of your faith. God help you, you are in a woeful case.

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