Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2100
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, August 18, 1889
“But without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” Hebrews 11:6.
MEN have lived who have pleased God—Enoch was one of them but he was not the only one. In all ages certain persons have been well-pleasing to God, and their walk in life has been such as was His delight. It should be the aim of everyone of us to please God. The thing is possible, notwithstanding all our imperfections and infirmities—let us aim at it in the power of the Holy Spirit. What has been worked in one man may be worked in another. We, too, may be well-pleasing unto God. Therefore let us seek after it with hopefulness. If we so live as to please the Lord, we shall only be acting as we ought to act. For we ought to please Him who made us and sustains us in being. He is our God and Lord—and obedience to Him is the highest Law of our being.
Moreover, the glorious Jehovah is so perfectly good, so supremely holy, that the conduct which pleases Him must be of the best and noblest sort, and therefore we should seek after it. Should we not aspire to that character upon which God Himself can smile?
The approbation of our fellow men is pleasant in its way. But they are always imperfect and often mistaken. And so we may be well-pleasing to them and yet may be far removed from righteousness. It may be a calamity to be commended in error, for it may prevent our becoming really commendable. But God makes no mistake. The Infinitely Holy knows no imperfection. And if it is possible for us to be pleasing to Him, it should be our one object to reach that condition.
As Enoch, in a darker age, was pleasing to Him, why should not we, upon whom the Gospel day has dawned? God grant us to find Divine Grace in His sight! If we please God, we shall have realized the object of our being. It is written concerning all things, “For His pleasure they are and were created.” And we miss the end of creation if we are not pleasing to the Lord. To fulfill God’s end in our creation is to obtain the highest joy.
If we are pleasing to God, although we shall not escape trial—for even the highest qualities must be tested—yet we shall find great peace and special happiness. He is not an unhappy man who is pleasing to God—God has blessed him, yes, and he shall be blessed. By pleasing God we shall become the means of good to others—our example will rebuke and stimulate. Our peace will convince and invite.
Here the Apostle comes in with needed instruction. He asserts that faith is absolutely needful, if we would please God. Then, to help us still further, he mentions two essential points of faith—“He that comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” When I have spoken on these two points, I shall close, as God shall help me, by showing that He then teaches us many valuable lessons.
I. First, then, THE APOSTLE ASSERTS THAT FAITH IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL TO THE PLEASING OF God. Take, as a keyword, the strong word “impossible.” “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” He does not say it is difficult, or so needful that without it success is barely possible. He declares it to be “impossible.” When the Holy Spirit says that a thing is impossible, it is so in a very absolute sense. Let us not attempt the impossible. To attempt a difficulty may be laudable, but to rush upon an impossibility is madness. We must not, therefore, hope to please God by any invention of our own, however clever, nor by any labor of our own, however ardent—since infallible Inspiration declares that, “without faith it is impossible to please God.”
We are bound to believe this statement, because we have it in the Sacred Volume, stated upon Divine authority. But, for your help, I would invite you to think of some few matters which may show you how impossible it is to please God without faith in Him.
For, first, without faith there is no capacity for communion with God at all. The things of God are spiritual and invisible—without faith we cannot recognize such things but must be dead to them. Faith is the eye which sees. But without that eye we are blind and can have no fellowship with God in those Sacred Truths which only faith can perceive. Faith is the hand of the soul, and without it, we have no grasp of eternal things.
If I were to mention all the images by which faith is set forth, each one would help you to see that you must have faith in order to know God and enter into converse with Him. It is only by faith that we can recognize God, approach Him, speak to Him, hear Him, feel His Presence and be delighted with His perfections. He that has not faith is toward God as one dead. And Jehovah is not the God of the dead, but of the living. The communion of the living God goes not forth toward death and corruption. His fellowship is with those who have spiritual life, a life akin to His own. Where there is no faith, there has been no quickening of the Holy Spirit, for faith is of the very essence of spiritual life. And so the man who has no faith can no more commune with the living God and give Him pleasure, than can a stick or a stone, a horse or an ox, hold converse with the human mind.