Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1421
“By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months by his parents, because they sa w he was a proper child; and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment.” Hebrews 11:23.
As I observed to you in the exposition, the stress in these passages of sacred biography should be laid upon the words, “by faith.” The mighty deeds of heroes and the obedient acts of pilgrim fathers are only told to us because they spring out offaith.. It is to commend the root that the fruits are mentioned. The children are named one by one that the mother may have the praise, for faith is the mother of all virtues. According to this Book, God estimates men by their faith and “without faith it is impossible to please God.” Faith is well-pleasing to the Most High, but it is in proportion to its strength, for there are cases in which weakness of faith has evidently been followed by chastisement and other cases in which strength of faith has been abundantly honored.
The more you believe, the more God blesses you. If you believe with faith as small as a grain of mustard seed you shall be saved, for where there is faith there is salvation. But if your faith is weak, you shall miss many comforts and only as your faith grows and becomes strong through Divine Grace shall you be a receiver of the greater, deeper and higher things of the Covenant of Grace. More faith is what we need and the Lord is willing to give it, Grace upon Grace! He delights, especially, to strengthen the faith which we already possess by trying it, by sustaining it under trials and thus rooting and grounding it. He thus causes it to become firm and vigorous.
Oh that we might always live so that the Lord might see in all our actions that they spring from faith. Then shall our actions as well as ourselves be always accepted of Him by Christ Jesus, for the Lord has plainly declared, “the just shall live by faith; but if any man draws back, My soul shall have no pleasure in him”—that is, draws back from faith and runs in the way of sense and feeling. Having begun by faith we are to live by faith. We are not to find life in the Gospel and then nourish it by the Law. We are not to begin in the Spirit and then seek to be made perfect by the flesh, or by confidence in man—we must continue to walk by the simple faith which rests only upon God, for this is the true spirit of a Christian.
Faith is the freewoman’s child and it cannot live with merit, or self-righteousness, for that is the bondwoman’s child and the Scripture says, “Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.” Faith is, in God’s sight, the very soul of all holy actions. That which is done without faith, even though, considered in itself, had there been faith at the back of it, it might have been accepted, yet it is not accepted without faith. As no sacrifice, even though it were an unblemished one, should be offered except with salt and with fire— and that fire a holy and heavenly fire—so nothing will be accepted of God except it is mixed with faith.
Hearing is no hearing to profit if it is not mixed with faith in them that hear it. And even doing may stand in our way unless, first of all, we have attended to that work—that God-like work, that work of God—that we believe in Him whom He has sent. There must be faith! Without it, it is impossible to please God and He measures our actions according to the faith from which they proceed. I do again, therefore, very strongly say I take the meaning of these texts to be not a laudation of the acts, themselves, as much as an honor put upon faith, itself, by the Holy Spirit.
If you read of those who subdued kingdoms, that is not the point—others have subdued kingdoms—but it is, “who through faith subdued kingdoms.” If you read of those who escaped the edge of the sword—many have done that, but none are recorded here but those—“who by faith escaped the edge of the sword.” “Turned to flight the armies of the aliens.” Many have done that by valor and strength. But to do it by faith—that is the thing! Many have endured scourging and bonds and imprisonments. Many have wandered about destitute, afflicted, tormented. But such sufferings are nothing unless they are borne by faith!
I might almost quote the words of Paul, only altering them a little, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not faith, I have become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and though I give my body to be burned, and have not faith, it profits me nothing” Faith—first, middle, last—must be the walk, life and triumph of the Christian! God gives to faith, God accepts from faith, God saves through faith, God keeps through faith, God sanctifies through faith, God perfects through faith. In all good things the power, life and acceptance are, “not of works, lest any man should boast,” but by faith that all things may be of Grace alone!