If they obey at all, it is because their own superior judgements incline that way; but to go forth, not knowing whither they go, and to go at all hazards, is not to their minds at all. iii. But when our heirship shall be fully manifested, and we shall come to the full ripe age--oh, then shall we come into our inheritance, to our wealth, to the mansions, and to the glory, and to the presence of Jesus Christ our Lord. Dogs don't bark as a man goes by that they know: they bark at strangers. Abraham's slips--for he made one or two--were made when he had left the land and gone down among the Philistines. Ask your friends afterwards rather than beforehand, for it is ill consulting with flesh and blood when duty is plain. Do I speak to a youth here who fears God, and who lives in an ungodly family? If we were our own, Ye might repine at our circumstances, but since we are not, let this be our cry, "Do what thou wilt, O Lord, and though thou slay me, yet will I trust in thee;" we are not true to our profession of being Christians, if we pick and choose for ourselves. Now is the hour for faith in the great Lord, who holds even lonely seas in the hollow of his hand. And then we have faith triumphing over natural affection, as we see Abraham climbing to the top of the hill and raising the knife to slay his only and beloved son at the command of God. You cannot miss your way, for you shall be guided in answer to prayer. Will ye always resist his Spirit? To be weak in prayer is a disease which will bring on many other maladies. God's blessings are blessings with both his hands. Commentary on Hebrews 11:1-3. With solemn awe believe the bitter word of judgment, that the word of mercy may be sweet to you. "Why," said he, the key of heaven is at his girdle; he openeth, and no man shutteth; he shutteth, and no man openeth?" I should not like you to overlook it. In no tent of all the fair can we rest. You must do as Lot did, when the angels presses him and said, "Haste to the Mount lest thou be consumed." I would entreat you each one to make an application of the text to yourself in every work of faith, and labor of love, in which you may be engaged. Abraham asked no question: he was not like Moses: he did not say, "Who am I that thou shouldest send me;" but when he was commanded to go, he went and he followed God without hesitation. by I Gordon. I do not think if any of us had such a family as God has we should ever have patience with them. Hebrews:2:9. No; each man's calling may seem to him to be more full of temptation than his fellows, but it is not so. Your hopes and delays are just such a mud wall. I know I do. I felt an agony of spirit, for I was under an awful sense of being forsaken of God, and yet I could not understand why I was surrounded by such thick darkness. We cannot think that religion can be true if such a man is a hypocrite. ', "And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. Jesus Is Able to Help Those Who Are Tempted . For this a man must have faith in God; and he must be sure that his trials, endured through his office, will have great recompense of reward. To the very edge of Jordan you will meet with temptations. After that fashion faith overcomes temptation. Practice by obedience now the song which you will sing for ever in glory. They were a grand company. Believe in God, and you will prevail with God. this is well!" The Lord give us back those whose examples can be safely copied in all things, even though they be decried as being "rigid" or "too precise"! Mark you, the chief of sinners can make the most daring of saints; the worst men in the devil's army, when they are converted, make the truest soldiers for Jesus. This was a grand thing for the tribes in their after journeys through the wilderness. God grant his grace to us! There may be truths non-essential to our salvation; but there are no non-essential truths with regard to our comfort. There are many ways in which the devil's whip can reach the back of the child of God. He who does not believe that God will cast unbelievers into hell, will not be sure that he will take believers into heaven. 2. Give me thyself, and take these all away, if so it please thee, but do not, my Lord, do not think I can be content with Egypt since I have set forth for Canaan, or that I can settle down in the wilderness now that I am journeying to the land of promise. You and I may be very weak at this time, but we can be made strong out of just such weakness. You sometimes see in a factory the wheels running some this way, and some the other, and some crossways, and they seem to be playing all sorts of anticks, but somehow or other the deviser brings them all to work for some settled object. It is in the Scriptures, certainly, but how do you reconcile it with science?" If you want to go back to sin, to carnality, to a love of the world, to your old condition, you never need to be prevented from doing so by want of opportunities: it will be something else that will prevent you, for these opportunities are plentiful and countless. The king will send his armies against that wicked city and destroy it, and if you are citizens of it you will lose all you have--you will lose your souls, you will lose yourselves. how often will our imagination paint sin in very glowing colors, and, though we loathe sin and loathe ourselves for thinking of it, yet how many a man might say, "had it not been for divine grace, where should I have been?--for my feet had almost gone, my steps had well nigh slipped." They simply blow a number of rams' horns; her neighbors say, "Why, Rahab, you do not mean to say you believe now? But there is no praying without believing. it had to be left beneath; we were called to rise out of it. And why should not God vouchsafe the same faith to thee, my poor, sinning, but contrite hearer? if thou dost not love Christ thou dost not believe in him; for to believe in Christ begets love. Commend me to firm faith for power to bear the daily cross. For thou hast a sacred right to the courts of mercy. The Lord's complaint is "I called and ye refused." Shall I help you to answer that question? "Prepare to meet thy God" was the motto you started with. Leave off saying, "I do not know," or "I do not care." They accomplished all their feats by a power which was not in them by nature. Opportunities to return in our own nature. The woman's seed, and the Lamb's sacrifice, which Abel had seen, these were almost all the revelation he had known. No; no child of God can be. It is nothing short of Godhead's utmost stretch of might that preserves a Christian from going back to his old unregenerate condition. When you get nearest to God, Satan will sometimes seem to get nearer to you. This is the place from which he went. We are saved by faith, because faith leads us to obey. But, believe me, you cannot have faith in the promise unless you are prepared to have faith in the threatening also. When I think of the strength of divine grace, I do not marvel that saints should persevere; but, when I remember the weakness of their nature, it seems a miracle of miracles that there should be one Christian in the world who could maintain his steadfastness for a single hour. I confess that I do not believe that one human brain is capable of answering every objection that another human brain could raise against the most obvious truth in the world. And O! She was disappointed, expecting that everyone would have some keys. Where Jesus died, there you shall live. Another thing strikes me. After all, we confess to-night, and rejoice in the confession, that our best hopes are for things that are out of sight: our expectations are our largest possessions. Depend upon it, faith that is never tried is not true faith. There is, in this chapter, a special commendation for faith in a pleasing variety of operations. Let him feel, "God commands, and therefore he will bear me through;" and he will be strong. Had my voice been strong enough, I could have enlarged, for it is a subject upon which much might be said extremely interesting to the spiritual mind. You are deceiving yourselves if you think so. Noah had not a careless fear, as some here have. "Ah!" Jun 23, 1996. You will say, "You want to make proselytes." Did not you find very soon that there was a thorn in the flesh? But mark, Rahab's faith was a SINGULAR FAITH. How long shall unbelief lodge within you and grieve the Holy Spirit? 2 For by it the men of old gained approval. Go not to wine for comfort in the hour of depression. Or in some cases, perhaps, they have to go to the workhouse, and be far away from all Christian intercourse or anything that could comfort them. Yes; and you will reply, that Christ said to the Pharisees, "Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte." Do you not? Hold you to God's Word by faith, and you will be strong. Hare you not been obliged to say, after you have had all that the world could give you, "Vanity of Vanities, all is vanity?" It never built an ark like Noah; it never offered a sacrifice like Abraham; it never subdued kingdoms like Joshua; it never quenched the violence of fire as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. A. Moses' choice to obey God by faith resulted in short-term suffering. It must be sooner or later exercised. Again, it may be that I am speaking to sad ones who suffer under mental depression. Hast thou a poor, faint heart in this sacred exercise? You, dear hearers, are not good hearers so long as you are only hearers; but when the heart is affected by the ear, and the hand follows the heart, then your faith is proved. cells in an azure synapse studio notebook can be reordered without copying and pasting the contents. Charles Spurgeon has been called "the Prince of Preachers" and "the last Puritan." His many sermons are among the best in Christian literature. I hope, beloved, you do not think of God's sovereignty as tyranny, or imagine that he ever could or would will anything but that which is right. But if thou hast even a trembling faith, thou hast the root of the matter within thee. A dead world may satisfy a dead heart, but ever since you have known something of better things have you ever been contented with the world? Perhaps you have tried to fill your soul with the daintiest provisions the world can offer; to wit--God has prospered you, and you have said, "Oh, this is well." He answered, "What were you thinking about me for? Well, be it so; but he that endureth to the end shall be saved; and all those that die in faith are gathered with the great cloud of witnesses. Without faith thou art out of the kingdom of grace, a stranger to the commonwealth of Israel. "Many are called, but few are chosen." Why, in this, that they stood as firm in the storm as they stood in the calm--that they were as content to serve God alone as they were to run by fifties. When God began with many of us, he found us very low down beneath the flood of evil. Obedience has become as much his rule as self-will is the rule of others. And, because we desire this better thing, we cannot go back and be content with things which gratified us once. The hour is coming when you and I shall lie low upon our silent beds of languishing, and the message will come "Arise and go forth from the house in which thou hast dwelt, from the city in which thou halt done business, from thy wife, from thy children, from thy bed, and from thy table. "Thy statutes," said David, "have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage." calhfa loan limits 2022 Fiction Writing. Perhaps their views on baptism may have changed, and seeing nothing in Scripture to warrant infant sprinkling, they have come out with a determination to practice believer's baptism. Dark is my path. If God had commanded Abraham to go to the utmost bounds of the green earth, to "rivers unknown to song," Abraham would have departed. At times you and I are assailed as to our faith in the Bible, by people who say, "How do you make that out? For ever and for ever shall the tenderness and mercy of God be thus despised? You are not much like Noah. "Yes." Whatever we may find in this world, we shall never find a heaven here. God's time is best. So far as I have reason to fear that my task is hopeless it becomes a heavy one. Alas! If we have a faith which is greedy in hearing, severe in judging, and rapid in self-congratulation, but not inclined to obedience, we have the faith of hypocrites. The writer to the Hebrews began this chapter speaking of faith in the present tense: Now faith is. "Yea," he said; "' he is a fellow that preaches with his feet." No. He prepared the right materials; he prepared the different parts so as to fit together: he prepared his mind, and then prepared his work. Some of you are engaged in the midst of ungodly men, and those engagements supply you with constant opportunities to sin as they do, to fall into their excesses, to lapse into their forgetfulness of God, or even to take part in their blasphemies. So, then, you see the reason why the Christian cannot go back, though he has many opportunities, lies in this, that through divine grace he has had produced in his heart desires for something better, and even when he does not as yet enjoy that something better, the desires themselves become mighty bonds that keep him from returning to what he was. If you are one of those plants which seldom bloom with bunches of bright flowers, but have your blossoms hidden and concealed, be not disquieted. But do not distress yourself, wait till some one else comes up. Trust you in Christ to overcome by his Spirit that which he has put away by his death. Believe in his Spirit, and pray by his help. Dogs don't bark when a man goes by that they know--they bark at strangers. Why put your life in jeapordy for such an improbability? Meanwhile, the more fully we obey at this present, the nearer we shall be to his temple-gate. These all sprang from plain, humble men, who knew their Bibles, and believed the doctrines of grace. He who is not firm at starting is cutting out for himself a poor pattern of life. God does not create useless things: he intends that the faith he gives should have its test, should glorify his name. 11 Spurgeon's Bible Commentary Hebrews 11 Hebrews 11:1-13 Hebrews 11:1. Take heed of rushing to perdition over your mother's prayers! But this man was one day met by a friend, who said to him, "Where is your wife?" We don't enjoy them yet, but when our heirship shall be fully manifested, and we shall come to the full ripe age, oh! He looks to that iron safe to be quite sure that it is well secured--he cannot forget his dear gold. But I must close with the sweetest part of the text. Did not Rebekah come from thence? -- Hebrews 11:15-16. His faith put its hand inside the hand of its father, and he was content to be led wherever his father would lead him. Now, perhaps, God is beginning some good thing in her heart. But it is just the same with adversity. Viewed as they are, they are such a rabble in many respects that it is marvellous he is not ashamed of them; and yet he never is; and to prove that he is not ashamed of them we have this fact, that he calls himself their God, "I will be your God," and he oftentimes seems to speak of it as a very joyful thing to his own heart. (1). Henceforth, in this world we have no home, no true home for our spirits; our home is beyond the flood; we are looking for it amongst the unseen things; we are strangers and sojourners as all our fathers were, dwellers in this wilderness, passing through it to reach the Canaan which is to be the land of our perpetual inheritance. The same faith which saved Rahab can save thee. We are not squabblers, itching to prove our superiority in reasoning, but we are children of light, worshipping our God by bowing our whole minds to the obedience of faith. This woman's faith was A SELF-DENYING FAITH. You are not allowed to halve the Scriptures, and to believe what you please; you are not allowed to believe the Scripture with a half-heartedness, for if you do this wilfully, you have not the faith which looks alone to Christ. If in this life only you had hope, you would be of all men most miserable; but having that hope, you are among men most happy. Thy sin was laid on him: it is forgiven thee. Believe the threat, even though it should chill your blood; believe, though nature shrinks from the overwhelming doom; for, if you do not believe, the act of disbelieving God about one point will drive you to disbelieve him upon the other parts of revealed truth, and you will never come to that true, child-like faith which God will accept and honour. We cannot, when we judge ourselves rightly, have patience with ourselves; but, how is it that God bears with the ill manners of such a froward, weak, foolish, forgetful generation as his people are. Dear hearer, have you faith? But there is life arising from his death. If the Lord has given you substance, and you are prompted to be generous to the cause of God, do not count every sixpence over, and calculate what others would give; count it after you have given it, if it must be counted at all, but it would be better still not to let your left hand know what your right hand doeth. Some do not think that there is much in prayer. No, wherever God in his providence guides you, let it be your joy to know that he is too wise to err too good to be unkind. Believers "quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong." We cannot take any opportunity to go back, because we desire something better than we could get by returning to that country from whence we came out. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. If you are a stranger, they naturally bark at you. Oh, fly to him. I shall have some things to say this morning concerning this notable victory of faith over sin, such as I think will lead you to see that this was indeed a supereminent triumph of faith. It is for us in our weakness to go forward as the Lord leads us; and the day of the resounding timbrels and the twinkling feet will come in due time, and Jehovah will be magnified when even humble maidens "sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously." 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