UNBELIEF CONDEMNED AND FAITH COMMENDED – Charles Spurgeon
UNBELIEF CONDEMNED AND FAITH COMMENDED
Introduction
“They are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith.” – Deuteronomy 32:20
“Blessed is that man that makes the Lord his trust.” – Psalm 40:4
These two texts will serve to show the different estimate which God has of unbelief and of faith. He says of unbelievers, in my text taken from Deuteronomy, “They are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith”—as much as to say that the absence of faith proves them to be froward, presumptuous, willful, disobedient—a people at cross-purposes with God. He says not only that they are perverse and froward, but He adds an emphatic word—“they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith.” The second text most clearly shows us that God has a high approbation for faith, for He, Himself, by the Holy Spirit, says, “Blessed is that man that makes the Lord His trust.” Here, then, we have set before us a great evil to which we are sadly inclined—and a great Grace which we greatly need. May God the Holy Spirit work faith in us by His own gracious power!
Alas, it is still true that “all men have not faith.” Even when an Apostle preached, we read of the congregation, that some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not. There is that division among you at this time. Oh, that unbelievers may become Believers before this service ends!
I will tell you what I shall be driving at this morning—I have a special character in view and I long to be made useful to persons of that sort. Outspoken and naked unbelief the most of you abhor. Should unbelief display itself in its real hideousness, you who have been brought up religiously would be startled at its approach, would close the door immediately and bolt it fast lest such a demon of the deep should gain an entry into your souls!
Consequently, unbelief, when it attacks the regular hearer of the Gospel, takes care to disguise itself. It pretends to be something other than it is. It does not walk abroad in all its natural deformity, but it approaches us as the Gibeonites came near to Israel when “they did work wilily and went and made as if they had been ambassadors.”
There are those here who do not doubt, for a moment, the existence or goodness of God—neither have they any question about the Inspiration and Infallible Truth of Holy Scripture—and yet they are entertaining within their hearts an unbelief which eats as does a canker! A deadening unbelief is upon them so that they abide in darkness and take no pains to come into the Light of God. Yet they do not condemn themselves, but rather look for pity as though it were their infirmity and not their fault.
To them, unbelief acts like Jezebel when she tired her hair and painted her face. Oh, that my words could strip off the disguise of this evil thing! Of this most deceitful form of unbelief I would say, as Jehu said of Jezebel, “Throw her down.” And then I would cry—Go see, now, this cursed thing and bury it, for it is a horrible evil. That which prevents men from finding salvation by putting their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ is an enemy so hateful and malicious that no quarter must be given to it!
No excuse must be made for it—it must be utterly destroyed from under Heaven! Dear Friend, you tell me that you are by no means an infidel or a skeptic, and yet you do not believe so as to find peace with God! You tell me that you cannot believe, which is a confession that you are so false at heart that you cannot believe the Truth of God! It is well that you should admit this gross depravity, but I have reason to fear that you are hardly conscious of the horrible nature of the crime which you acknowledge!
I beg you to lay to heart this fact—that unless you have faith in Jesus you will perish just as surely as if you were an open denier of the Word of God and a reviler of His Son! There are, doubtless, degrees in the terribleness of the punishment, but there are no degrees in the certainty of the fact that every unbeliever will be shut out from the blessing of the Gospel of Christ! “He that believes on the Son has everlasting life: and he that believes not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abides on him.”
I want you to remove every flattering unction from your souls and to know for sure that, “He that believes not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God” (John 3:18). Dream not that because you do not happen to be an avowed atheist, or deist, or agnostic, that, therefore, your own form of unbelief is harmless!
We read of Israel in the wilderness that, “they could not enter in because of unbelief”—yet they were not atheists! A passive unbelief will ruin a man as surely as an active infidelity! Suppose that an enemy is on this side of a river, destroying everybody? To find safety, the river has to be crossed, and there is but one bridge. Yonder man declares that he will never go over such a bridge—he does not believe in it! He asserts that it is a rotten old thing which would break down under his weight. He hates the structure. He will not even call it a bridge at all! He ridicules all who venture upon it.
It is clear that he will stay on this side of the river and die by the pursuer’s sword. He is the type of the avowed skeptic! But where are you? You say with unfeigned distress, “I am horrified to hear that man talk so of that excellent bridge. I believe that it is well constructed and that it has carried hundreds of thousands over it. I cannot bear to hear a word said against it, for my dear father and mother found refuge by crossing it and they are now in the land of peace.”
Yet you do not escape by that bridge, yourself, though well aware of your danger! Do you answer, “Well, I do not feel worthy to go over it.” Why, that is nonsense! It is as if you should say, I cannot swim and, therefore, will cross over the river by means of the bridge. Your unworthiness cannot be a reason for refusing to accept a free salvation! On the contrary, it is a reason why you should accept it at once.
However, it matters little what your excuse may be—you will perish forever if you do not believe in Jesus! Take another illustration. A fatal disease is abroad and a remedy has been discovered of the most effectual kind. One man denounces the medicine, the physician who invented it and the apothecaries who distribute it—he can hardly find words enough in the dictionary with which to express his contempt for what he calls a monstrous quackery. He will evidently receive no benefit from the medicine.
That is not your case—you are of quite another mind. You esteem the medicine, reverence the physician and even feel an affection for the apothecaries who distribute it! No question about the matter has ever crossed your mind—on the contrary, you are an advocate for the great remedy and believe firmly that it has healed multitudes of persons. Why do you not take the wholesome medicine yourself?
You tell me that you are trying to get better and that you do not quite see how the medicine can heal you. This shows that you mistrust the power of the medicine to heal you just as you are. You will derive no more benefit from it than the other man who rails at it! It is quite impossible that any man should receive the blessing which comes through the atoning blood of Christ unless he has faith—and whether he goes to the length of an utter contempt of the great Sacrifice, or stands off from it because he does not feel as he could desire—he will surely die without forgiveness.
Out of Christ, the doom of eternal wrath will fall on you whether near to the Kingdom of God or far off from it. I want to talk with those unbelieving people who are not avowedly skeptical. Some of these I have seen and I know that they are a numerous class. They are very sincere and are really seeking after salvation, but the one thing which they refuse to do is to believe in the Lord Jesus.
They will not trust their God! They will not believe in the promise which He has made to us in Christ Jesus! They would suffer any penance. They would give anything they possess. They would cut off their right arm—they would consent to lose their eyes—if they might but be saved! But this one matter of trust in God and accepting His way of salvation is the point in which they quarrel with the Most High. Upon this matter, in which the Lord will assuredly never yield to them, they stand out very obstinately, and so prove that they are “a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith.”
If they would obtain the Lord’s blessing, the only way to it is faith. Oh, that they would hold out no longer, for, “Blessed is that man that makes the Lord his trust.”
I. Unbelief is Frowardness
One very frequent disguise of unbelief is that of humility. “I feel myself such a great sinner. I feel so much evil to be in my heart, I dare not believe in Jesus!” If you judged by appearances you might think this unbelief very modest, but, indeed, it is not so. It imitates the tone of humility, but it cannot catch the accent.
This deceptive vice dares to hint that the sinner’s unworthiness is a reason why Jesus should not be trusted! What? Would any man tell me that his own wickedness is a reason why he should distrust me? That would be too absurd! Because you are such a sinner, is God, therefore, a deceiver and not to be trusted? This is not humility, but audacity!
Our fearing to trust the promise of God because we are evil is a most perverse piece of wickedness. Surely, God is true, even if we are liars! Our falsehood does not make Him false, or deprive Him of His right to be believed! Do we dare to tell Him that He cannot save when He assuredly promises to save us if we trust Him? Do we deny His willingness to save when He sends us gracious invitations and entreats us to turn to Him? This is insolence—not penitence!
However great a sinner you may be, there is forgiveness with God that He may be feared, for, “all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men.” Do not deny this. Do not be so profanely bold as to call Jesus a liar!
Unbelief also claims to be timid. It cries, “I am afraid to come to Christ, afraid to trust Him with my soul.” This is not true fear, but an evil pride! The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau! The sound is that of an amiable timorousness, but the spirit is that of frowardness.
Friends, if you truly feared God, you would tremble at the idea of distrusting Him. It is a very daring act of impiety to question any promise of the Most High—it is the height of rebellion to deny the power of the death of His dear Son!
That kind of timidity and humility is to be shunned and to be abhorred which dares to make God’s love a dream and His mercy a fiction! Since the Lord’s mercy endures forever; since Jesus has never yet cast out a soul that has come to Him, it is folly to talk of being afraid to come to Him!
Dread doubting and fear not to trust your God!
II. Faith Has the Divine Approval
“Blessed,” says God, “is that man that makes the Lord his trust.” We are sure that it is so. Wherever there is faith, God is pleased with it, for faith is the sure mark of God’s elect. We can only know them by their believing in the Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
God would never have set that of which He disapproved to be the mark of His eternal choice, but, as He makes faith in Jesus to be the token of His covenanted ones, He must approve of it. Remember that God has been pleased, in His great love, to make this the main requirement of the Gospel. “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.” “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.”
The Lord puts faith into the very forefront because He delights in it. I find not that the Lord has promised salvation to love, or to patience, or to courage—admirable as these Graces are—He has put this crown upon the head of faith.
“Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” The Lord must certainly approve of that which He makes to be the grand necessity of salvation!
Do you not know that God has made faith to be the one thing necessary in the matter of prayer? If you come before Him in prayer, He will not ask you to bring your hands laden with gifts, nor to drop from your tongue choice words of eloquence! But you “must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him,” or else you can have nothing at His hands.
III. Faith is Blessedness
“Blessed is that man that makes the Lord his trust.” To believe in God is to be blessed by God. “Oh, but,” says one, “I believe in God and I am in great trouble.” Just so, and within that trouble there dwells a measureless blessing!
Your trial is the veil which covers the face of a loving God. Faith will make you sing with the author of this Psalm, “I waited patiently for the Lord.” Faith says, “I am in deep trial, but all things work together for my good. It is, therefore, a great gain to me to be as I am. All these griefs and woes are but a heavenly surgery to cure me of the malady of inbred sin.”
This enables the Believer to receive correction with patience. He knows that all is right and, therefore, the child of God frets not and does not kick against the pricks. As in the old days of surgery, a brave man laid himself down and gave himself up to the knife, so does the Believer resign himself to sharp affliction because he knows that it is necessary for his spiritual life and will tend to his perfection in Grace.
Thus faith distils a potent medicine from poisonous plants and extracts light out of darkness. Is not this enough to make a man blessed?
Faith, again, releases the afflicted out of trouble. Turn to the Psalm, again, and read—“I waited patiently for the Lord, and He inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And He has put a new song in my month, even praise unto our God: many shall see it and fear, and shall trust in the Lord.”
If you are shut in by affliction, like a man in a deep pit and, if instead of rising out of it by your exertions, you only sink lower, like one who struggles to rise out of miry clay. If you see no way of escape, whatever, do not despair or resort to desperate means, or think bad of God, but just pray and trust—and soon, like David, you shall bear witness to the blessedness of trusting!
“Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.” The Lord knows how to deliver the righteous when they cannot guess how He will do it! Jehovah is not limited in ways and means. Is the Lord’s arm waxed short? Trust in the Lord in the dark and He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday.
Thousands of saints who have tried and proved the faithfulness of the Lord unite in chorus to declare that He has delivered His people and will deliver them! The man that makes the Lord his trust is blessed because his faith creates in him a deep peace.
It is responsibility which causes the wear and tear of life—at least it is so in my case. Now, he who trusts a matter with the Lord sees that the fulfillment of the promise lies with God and not with him.
When we trust in the Lord, we cease to worry because it is the Lord’s business to answer to our faith— “Tis mine to obey, ‘tis His to provide.” He who takes the Lord for his Guide no longer worries about the way. He who takes Him for his Watchman rests in perfect peace. He who accepts Him as a Savior looks for sure salvation at His hands.
There is a wonderful calm in the heart when we can commit our way unto the Lord—then we delight ourselves in the Lord—and He gives us the desires of our heart.
That blessed act of casting every burden upon the Lord is faith’s masterpiece and it gives a sweet quietus to all care. To rest in perfect peace of mind is the best blessedness beneath the stars—and we have it, for we hear the Spirit say concerning all the people of God, “And the Lord shall help them, and deliver them: He shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in Him.”
Now, suppose you and I were laboring to reach Heaven by our own merits? Then we might bid farewell to peace, for all the way we would be terribly afraid that we had not done enough, or suffered enough, or prayed enough, or repented enough. There is no rest upon that bed, for it is shorter than a man may stretch himself. But, “we who have believed, enter into rest.” Jesus is our Rest—in Him we have peace with God.
If I could make the Lord Jesus my trust and yet be lost I should be a great loser, but I should not lose so much as God would! How is that? I should lose my salvation, but the Lord would lose His Glory, His truthfulness, His goodness! His Gospel would be dishonored and His Son robbed of His reward. That cannot be!
When a man trusts his money with a firmly established bank, he does not sit up all night to protect his cashbox and iron safe. No, his money is out of his own keeping and he feels at ease about it. Thus we commit our body, soul and spirit into the pierced hands of Jesus who has redeemed us, and we know and are confident that He is able to keep that which we have committed unto Him until that day.
None can know perfect rest of heart but those whose minds are stayed on God by a sincere trust in Him. Faith, in addition to bringing peace, creates a holy elevation of character, and that is blessedness.
The man who lives by sight and walks according to the judgment of the flesh is confined within a range too narrow for blessedness. He is not much above the brute that perishes! His provender and stall are the main dependence of his joy! But the man that lives by faith ranges among eternal things and drinks from celestial fountains! His is a high, sublime, mysterious life. Is it not the life of God in man?
I have compared the ascent of faith to climbing a succession of lofty stairways. Up from the depths we have already risen by no other means than faith in the Invisible! Not a single step before us can we see. Beneath and around, clouds and darkness roll in enormous masses—the mist hangs thick over our pathway. Like the world, which the Lord hangs upon nothing, so our life has no visible dependence! We put down our foot on what seems thin as air and behold—it is firm as a rock beneath us! Rising, ever rising, we tread from stair to stair and are safe as the Throne of the Eternal—but we never see more than one step at a time and at times scarcely so much as that.
Sight brings us no comfort, but Faith fills us with delight, for above her head shines out as clear as the sun, the Words of the Immutable Jehovah!
“Ah,” cries one, “I could not live with nothing to depend upon!” Oh, my Brother, is God nothing? Elijah had nothing to depend upon, for Cherith dried up and the ravens came no more with bread and meat. And the widow woman had only flour enough for one more meal—yet the little meal in the barrel wasted not and the cruse of oil never failed!
Isaiah had nothing to depend upon but God, you know—that is to say, he had only everything. The Believer has nothing to depend upon except his God, but what more does he need? What more could he have?
Mark how yon heavens stand without a pillar! See how the round world floats in space without a stay! What more does the universe require than the power of the Eternal?
O Believer, get out into these deep waters where there is sea room for faith and no weak creatures to interfere with unmingled reliance upon God—for blessed is that man whose life is rendered sublime by an undivided confidence in the living God!
Lastly, blessed is the believing man when he thinks of dying, for he is sure and certain that he cannot truly die. Faith has so linked him with the one living God that he feels immortality pulsing through his entire nature!
When he comes to lie on the bed of sickness and gradually decays, he has no fear of his departure! On the contrary, he looks forward with expectation to be delivered from the bondage and sinfulness of this mortal life and to be admitted into the liberty and perfection of the life eternal!
Look at him as he quits the shores of earth—he is not torn away by violence, forced unwillingly into an unknown hereafter—no, he undresses for his last rest solemnly but expectantly! A song is on his lips and glory is in his heart!
He has finished his work; he has been washed from his sin; he has embraced the promise and now he falls asleep upon the breast of his Redeemer—assured that he shall wake up in the likeness of his Lord!
“Mark the perfect man and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.”
Oh, Souls, if you will believe, you shall have both Heaven on earth and Heaven in Heaven! But if you will not believe your God—your Savior—many sorrows shall be to you and, in the end, you will destroy yourselves forever!
It matters not what excuses you make about this, or that, or the other—if you will not trust your God, He will have nothing to do with you! If you cannot believe Him. If you will make His Son to be false. He must say at the last, “Depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” It cannot be otherwise! This shall make the great division between you and the righteous—that you believe not in Him—while they have made the Lord their trust.
If you believe in the Lord Jesus, you shall be numbered with His chosen! And all His promises shall be fulfilled to you, for with you has He made an everlasting covenant which shall stand fast forever and ever when all visible things have melted away!
May God uplift you from the miry clay of unbelief to the rock of confidence in Him, for Christ’s sake! Amen.