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FAITH AND ITS FOOTSTEPS.

HEB. XI.

THE apostle sums up in this chapter, and shows that all through man's history, no matter who had obtained a "good report," it was by faith. This was specially a trial for the Hebrews. Their very religion was one of sight. They had a system to walk by-a visible temple, sacrifices, priesthood, and the like. Messiah, they expected to see. (When they did see Him, they hated and put Him to death, and this Messiah is gone to heaven.) In becoming Christians, they lost all they had possessed, and gained nothing that was tangible to the flesh. There was, therefore, the constant temptation to deny an unseen Messiah, and to turn back to things seen.

The saint's warrant is the word of God. The moment he acts upon any object seen, he ceases to act as a Christian. Christ lived, in that sense, the life of faith. (Heb. xii. 2.) It is the life of faith we get here, not salvation, or the finding peace in the way of faith. Faith is looked at as the power by which they walked.

There are these two things in faith: as it regards, 1st. PEACE OF SOUL.

2nd.-POWER FOR WALK.

If I talk of faith, I may mean belief of a testimony-a person tells me a thing, and I believe him. But there is another sense in which I may have faith in that man; that is, I may put my trust in him. We often confound these things. There is the testimony of God which I have to believe, and a trusting in God which is the power of my walk.

That which gives me peace, is receiving the testimony of God: I do want confidence in God for power of walk; but I must not confound this confidence in God with His testimony.

We shall find the two things in Abraham. God called Abraham and shewed him the stars of heaven, and said,

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"So shall thy seed be ;" and Abraham "believed God." In the offering up of Isaac (v. 9), there was not the receiving of a testimony, but "believing in God."

Here I am, a sinner with the consciousness of sin; how can I trust in God? I know Him to be a holy God, a hater of sin; how can I trust in Him? I dare not be in His presence with sin upon me,-what can meet that? it is not denying the holiness of God; it is not my putting away my sin; but God tells me my sin is put away. I believe Him. This is not trusting in His power. The thing that gives me peace, is my receiving a testimony. My spirit cannot rest, when I am conscious of sin, unless I know that it is not imputed to me; it is God who has seen it just as it is; my being content with myself, will not do; I must have God content about me. There is a wrestling going on in the soul that wants to be content with itself. Believing God's testimony, it would be at peace. It has never yet been brought to feel itself a thoroughly worthless sinner. The question is not as to my not having sin; but do I believe what God says, when He says it is put away? There is really a work of the Spirit of God in this; not in producing what will satisfy me, but in bringing my soul to say, 'It is all over with me.' God often allows it to struggle on; it will try to get better; He lets it, and, like a man in the mire who pulls one foot out to get the other in, its case is only the worse. The answer to this comes in in the blessed truth of the Gospel of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, that "whosoever believeth in Him is justified from all things." (Acts xiii. 38, 39.) I find God perfectly at rest; He is resting in Jesus perfectly satisfied. Christ says, "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do ;" and God says, "Sit thou on my right hand." I get rest to my soul because I find that God has not one single thing against me. There is often this struggling under the sense of conviction, before the soul gets peace.

Another thing is the walk of faith. Come sifting, come trial, come what may, the ground of my peace is never touched. If it were not completely settled, done, it never could be, and why? because it says, that, "without (not "sprinkling,' but) shedding of blood there is no remission." (Heb. ix. 22.) Therefore, if not perfectly done, Christ must die again, shed His blood again. But it is finished. The Spirit of God will make me see it; but it is done. I take this word of Jesus,

"I have glorified thee on the earth, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do;" and I say, 'It is finished.'

Now I get the path of faith opened before me; I am sure God loves me, and is nothing but love; I can, therefore, trust in Him: I know His love; He has saved me as a sinner, I can trust in His love as a saint.

Mark the order in which things are presented here.

To faith, that which is unseen becomes as present, as real, as though present to sight. (v. 1.) Yea, much more so; because there is deception in seen things; but there is no deception in things communicated by the Spirit to the heart.

Through faith we know that creation was by the word of God. (v. 3.)

Then (v. 4) we come to the great basis on which a fallen creature can have to say to God. Let us look a little at the distinctive character of Abel's sacrifice.

Cain offered to God what cost him more. His was not the case of a thoroughly irreligious man; he offered to God, worshipped God, and was utterly rejected. He was not an infidel or an irreligious man; but a worshipper, and a rejected worshipper. His worship was founded on unbelief. A sinner, turned out of paradise, he could go to God as though nothing had happened. So with many; they think they can go and worship God, pay a compliment to Him. And what

did he bring? The very thing that had the stamp of the curse upon it. God had said, "Cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; thou shalt eat of the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." That is what comes of a person thinking he can worship God (" do his duty," as he terms it); it is the denial of the whole truth of his condition.

What does Abel? Quite another thing; he brings a slain lamb, comes through death (in principle, through the atonement of Christ). He sets between himself and God the testimony of a provided sacrifice. By faith he offered. Before the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the revelation had been that such a thing would be done, as though I were to say to a debtor in prison, "I will pay your debts." All that we enjoy as a finished work was a subject of hope. "Whom God," it is said, "hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of

God; to declare at this time, His righteousness; that He might be just, and the justifier of Him which believeth in Jesus." (Rom. iii. 25, 26.) We are not looking onward to a future sacrifice; I have not a promise of getting out of the prison-I am out. We have a testimony that the thing is done, and the Holy Ghost is the seal of the testimony. The Holy Ghost cannot testify anything to my soul, otherwise than that it is all done, the debt paid, the door opened, all finished. Two things are spoken of in 1 Peter i. 10, 12, "the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow :" we are between these two things. The Old Testament both; we come after the sufferings, and look for the glory. The Holy Ghost has been sent down, meanwhile, to testify of accomplished redemption. That is not my hope. I am not waiting for my sins to be put away, they are put away. This is the basis on which we rest. God rests in His Son, and there I rest.

Next (v. 5) we come to the walk of Enoch. Here I find another thing. (Of course everybody is not translated as Enoch and Elijah were.) Not only can I approach God (faith does not merely tell me this), but that has come in which has set death altogether aside. Death belongs to me now; it is not, as it is called, a "king of terrors." All things are ourss-life is ours, death is ours-for we are Christ's, and Christ is God's. (1 Cor. iii. 22, 23.) In Enoch we find a walk with God, a power of life with God, and such a power that death is not seen. We have the life of the Son of God, and not only His death; the blessed truth, not simply of a made sacrifice, so as to give my soul peace, but that all the power of Satan in death has been destroyed. God allowed Satan to do his worst; all that "the prince of the world" could do was brought to bear upon His Son. "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." "We are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. confident, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." (2 Cor. v.) What I am looking for, is not to be "unclothed," but "clothed upon;" but if I die, the life that I have is untouched, and I shall be "present with the Lord."

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Here I find two things which faith recognises; first, the

blood of atonement, by which sin was put away; and secondly, a power of life by which we walk (not merely as His people, but) with God. The result will be that the power of death is entirely gone. We are identified with a living Christ, as we are saved by the death of Christ.

We do not hear anything about "condemning the world" in the case of Abel or in that of Enoch. God "bears testimony to the gifts" of the one, and the other "walks with God." But I find another thing. (v. 7.) We are going through the world, and God has given us a testimony about the world, and what is going to happen to the world. He has "appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead." (Acts xvii. 31.) "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith." Warned of what is coming on the world, he owns and recognises the judgment, and falls in with God's revealed way of salvation; and he condemns the world. Mark this, faith "condemns the world ;" not merely is it belief in a sacrifice that saves, and power for walk with God; but it says of the world that it is altogether departed from God, and is going to be judged. We have the testimony of the word of God, that the thing that is coming upon this world is judgment. There is many a person who, as a saint, would rest in a saint's walk with God; but who shrinks from breaking with the world. The saint is so to act upon this testimony as to the judgment of the world, as practically to condemn it. Had we Noah's faith, as well as Abel's and Enoch's, we could not go with the world. If His people are saved by Him, He is coming to judge the world; and therefore they have their portion with Christ, and in Christ, so that when He comes they will be with Him. As sure as Christ rose from the dead, He is "the Man" God has ordained to judge the world, "this present evil world ;" and so sure is there no condemnation for you and for me, if we believe in Him. That by which I know there will be a judgment is that by which I know there will be none for me. How do I know there will be a judgment? Because God has raised Him from the dead. What more has God told me of His resurrection? That my sins are all put away.

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