READING: Heb. 10:37-39; 11:12:1-2.
In order rightly to
appreciate and apprehend the value of this part of the
letter, from the end of Chapter 10 through into Chapter
12, we have to remember the position in which these
Hebrew believers were represented as being, or the
position to which they were being called, or of which
they were being reminded; that is, the heavenly position
as over against the one to which they were at least in
danger of falling. You know that the whole purpose of
this letter was to cut in between these believers and
that which was seeking to bring them down again on to an
earthly religious level and basis, as under the
government of the outward temporal forms of religious
life as set up through Moses. The course of the letter is
the unveiling of the fact that all those Old Testament
things were but shadows of Christ Who was the substance;
pointing on to Him, and that with His coming all were
fulfilled and became heavenly in meaning, in value, for
life now. And now these saints, under great pressure and
trial, were being tempted to let go the heavenly position
and come down again to the earthly, to that which, for
the flesh, is so much easier a position of just doing
religious things outwardly, and letting that be the
beginning and end of everything. Thus the heavenly
position is that which gives point to this last great
summary, and it shows that it is the very position to
which the Lord's people are called which becomes the
ground of their greatest testings, that they are tried
according to the position they have taken. That is so in
every grade and every stage and every level. If the
measure is small, then we are tested according to that
measure, but if we take the full and the ultimate and the
highest, then the testing becomes supreme. We are tested
according to the position we take up.
Every
Dispensation Governed by Faith
Now, there is another
thing which this shows, and it is that faith is not
something which has come with the New Testament
dispensation, but that faith has been the principle by
which the Lord governed His saints in every age. The Lord
never intended the dispensation of the law through Moses
to be other than a faith dispensation, and it is not just
the contrast between the works of the law and faith that
is before us; because you have faith here taken up in
relation to all the people who were under the law and
made the standard of their judgment. By faith Moses... by
faith Israel, and onward under that whole dispensation,
everybody was judged according to faith. Faith ever has
been and ever will be the primary thing with God, the
supreme thing. It is a thing which governs all ages in
the mind of the Lord. Faith is the thing for every
age.
The
Basis of Faith
Now, what is the basis
of faith? When you look at this chapter, the eleventh
chapter of Hebrews, to see what the basis of faith is,
you discover that it is and was something spiritual, done
within a person. I know that in a number of cases
recorded here, things happened without. There is Sarah,
there is Isaac, there was deliverance from the furnace:
many things like that happened without. But whatever
happened without depended entirely upon something which
had happened within. We do not know how all these things
took place. For instance, by faith, when he was called of
God, Abraham went out. We do not know how he was called
of God. It may have been that an angel of the Lord
appeared unto him, or the Lord Himself may have appeared
in a bodily form to Abraham. Now we might say, Oh, if
only that happened to us, then it would give us such a
substantial foundation for faith! If only three men
appeared to us as they appeared to Abraham, and proved to
be the very representation of the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost in bodily form (as I think undoubtedly
they were; if you look at the incident closely, that is
the implication), how easy faith would be, or how
different would be our foundation for faith! He was
called of God.
Now, beloved, I do not
think it was a thing which happened without which became
the foundation of faith. It was something which, however
it came - it may have come by outward instrumentalities,
outward things - however it came, it was something which
was done inside, something registered inside, something
effected in an inward way; for it is very doubtful
whether ever an outward happening, a phenomenon, however
marvellous it might be, be it an angel from heaven, can
ever be an abiding, solid basis for faith. We can at
times under given circumstances always doubt our greatest
outward experiences. There is that in us called the soul
which is a psychical thing and it is capable of producing
the most remarkable and astonishing phenomena, so that we
can believe things which the soul produces, and then
presently turn round and say, Well, I was evidently
overwrought, things began to happen, I heard things, I
saw things! Thus we may question all that on a psychical
or psychological basis. That is the temptation. Was I
really at that time in a state of poise and balance, or
was I in a state of nervous tension? Did I imagine these
things, and were they only after all psychical things?
And that could happen to any of these men in either the
Old or New Testament. If that were the basis of faith, it
is altogether unsound and unsatisfactory. However the
Lord comes and whatever means He uses, the real basis of
faith is something that has been effected in us,
something wrought. Although it may have been the God of
glory Who appeared unto our father Abraham, the effect
was this, that Abraham knew something had happened in
him, something had been wrought in him, and he could say
from that time, There is something in me that is much
deeper than the means and method used by the Lord, that
has become a part of my very being! If you think for a
moment that, were an angel to come to you, you could more
easily believe in the future than you can without the
angel, remember you can always doubt your angels. There
is no guarantee that you will believe because you have
seen an angel, or because you have had an open heaven. It
is something which has to be inside, which, after all, is
invisible, intangible, but something very real. It is
something the Lord has done, something of the Lord
Himself, something that the Lord has made real to you
about Himself, His way, His mind, His will, something
wrought by the Holy Spirit. That is the basis of faith -
the Lord and His effect in your own life. I am not saying
your experience is to be the basis of faith, but the Lord
Himself as a reality within you, effecting something in
you and affecting you in a deep inward way. That is the
essence of faith here in this chapter right through. They
knew the Lord in an inward way, and that was the
beginning and that is the end for them in the matter of
faith.
The
Nature of Faith
Now, you see there was
a result from that. They came to a place where they could
and did believe for something which must eventuate,
though in many cases, in the majority of cases, it never
did eventuate in their lifetime. But the great statement
here in this chapter is that this made no difference.
They had come to such a position with the Lord, in this
knowing of Him, that they could all die not having
received the promises. All died in faith. You see, they
did not even at the last have the stimulus of seeing the
thing materialising; but they were able to die in faith.
It may be somewhat easier to live in faith, if by that
you mean that you expect the thing to be realised in your
lifetime. But the essence of faith is - 'This must be! It
is a part of God, it is God Himself, and whether I live
to see it or not, that makes no difference to faith; it
will be! And I live now, not to see it in my lifetime,
but I live now in relation to it to be realised at some
time in the purpose and intention of God'.
Then we have a further
wonderful statement. They received not the promises, they
died in faith, but they looked on, they looked on to
us. Faith carried them beyond their own lifetime,
and the statement is that they could not "be made
perfect". That word 'perfect' is very interesting.
It simply means they could not come to the consummation,
the full growth of their faith. That thing could not
reach its ultimate end until we came in. It demanded us.
They, apart from us, could not reach the consummation of
their faith; and faith goes on and sees that there are
yet things to be brought in by God for the realisation of
that which is in our hearts, for which we are living, for
which we are labouring, for which we are suffering, for
which we are being patient. Faith goes right on to the
end and says, It may not be in my time; there may be more
things to be brought in yet to make the consummation
possible, but eventually, my faith in God will be
vindicated, and the thing will be realised! Faith is a
big thing, a comprehensive thing, and a real purity of
faith means we do not just live to see things in our
time, so that, should there be any doubt about our seeing
them in our time, faith would go out. That is not the
essence of faith at all. We have to have an after-life
faith, a long view faith, which is not made less active
because the prospect of a full realisation in our time
begins to be overshadowed. No, their faith came into
being on the ground that God intended something and they
knew it, and God would realise it sooner or later; but
God might have to bring in much more even after they were
gone to realise it. Moreover, they were with God for that
with all their hearts. Even though they might not see it,
it must be. That is the basis and nature of faith here.
The
Issue of Faith
What then is the issue?
Twice over it says here that, by this kind of faith, they
received a good report. The elders received a good report
(v. 2). Then, toward the end, it says they all received a
good report (v. 39). That is what they did receive - a
good report. What is a good report? You know in the next
chapter, Chapter 12, we are children at school, children
of a family. Father is dealing with us as with sons, and
it is all part of this whole argument: My son, despise
not thou the chastening of the Lord and so on. It is all
for this good report. I do not believe that it is true in
the case of those referred to in Chapter 11 that the good
report related to what they achieved, what clever people
they were, what they were able to do in their lifetime.
That was not the good report. God is writing the report
of their life. What is the report for? No, it was not because they achieved so many
wonderful things. The good report was this, they trusted
in the Lord and did their utmost through faith. They did
not say, Oh, well, this will never be realised in our
lifetime we shall never be able to see this done; it is
no use! It needs better people than we are! No, they
faced the whole thing, and saw that, in the main, the
thing was humanly impossible, only God could do it. But
that did not make them sit back and say, Oh, I can never
be in this, and never have a part in this: I can never be
of any use in this! No, they believed God, they trusted
the Lord, and then they put themselves right into it with
all their hearts and lived in a positive trust in God.
They did all that faith could lead them and make them to
do. Faith is always an active thing. The good report was
that they trusted the Lord and got down to it, gave
themselves to it, however difficult things were.
Faith is going to
determine which of two things is going to characterise
us. This is the real point. It is either going to be that
we are living under a terrible paralysis, as altogether
petrified through confusion, perplexity, inability to
understand, being unable to disentangle, to sort things
out, to see straight and see clearly, to know what is
meant by happenings. That means utter paralysis, simply
standing with our hands on our hips, helpless and
hopeless. That is the effect of the absence of a positive
faith. The only way of life and deliverance from such a
paralysis is a deliberate faith in God which causes us to
take the attitude that we are going on with God,
understanding or not understanding, explaining or not
explaining, having light or having no light; we are going
right on with God on the basis of what God has done in
us, made real in us, of what God Himself is to us by what
He has effected in us. We are going on!
We, beloved, shall come
there and may come there more than once in the course of
our life; we shall come to the place where we realise we
are going right out into outer darkness and despair and
paralysis, to be ruled completely out of any
effectiveness, fruitfulness, or value whatever, unless we
pull ourselves together and say to ourselves, 'The whole
thing is an inexplicable, bewildering confusion, tangle
from our standpoint or the standpoint of man; but God is,
God is faithful. That is what He Himself says He is'.
Thus without questioning God we go on believing God. We
have even to believe God to the point of putting over on
to Him the responsibility for failures, for mistakes, in
so far as we have really and honestly put our lives at
His disposal and have become utter for God and are free
from personal interests and worldly interests and are
here only for God. We have to make over to the Lord's
account things which may have been mistakes or failures,
and trust Him with these and go on.
What is the
alternative? That is always the point. What is the
alternative? It is to give up and go out, to lose our
ground altogether; and when you come to weigh it up at
the end - why? Well, we did not trust the Lord. You see,
the Lord is not requiring that we should be perfect as
God is, and that is the standard we are trying to get to
so often; that we never make a mistake, that we never
have a question about it, that our way has been so
utterly perfect that we have every confidence in our own
way and every step we have taken. No, you and I will
never be there. Abraham made mistakes, Moses made
mistakes. All those people made mistakes. Elijah was a
man of like passions as we are, and Elijah threw himself
under a juniper tree and requested for himself that he
might die. They all went that way, but you see here is
the record - they all obtained a good report. Oh, Elijah
got a good report. Moses getting angry and losing the
promised land, got a good report. Abraham going down to
Egypt, Abraham and Ishmael; Abraham got a good report. Do
not let us try to be perfect as God is perfect. What the
Lord wants is a heart perfect toward Him; not that we did
our work perfectly but that we trusted the Lord. We must
ever remember that there is a great difference between
faith and presumption, between faith and self-will or
self-strength. Faith is based upon selflessness, and men
of faith have always been very humble men, marked by
adjustableness when they made mistakes. Let us not seek
to be infallible, but faithful.
First published in "A Witness and A
Testimony" magazine, May-June 1942, Vol 20-3