Faith as a Switch

“If thou couldst trust, poor soul,
In Him who rules the whole,
Thou wouldst find peace and rest.
Wisdom and sight are well; but Trust is best.”
A. PROCTER.

ISAIAH hii. 1; JOHN xi. 40.)

LAWYER whom I know took me the other day to
see the fire-proof strong room in which he keeps
valuable deeds and securities. It is excavated

under the street, and a passage leads far into the

interior, lined on either side with receptacles for

: the precious documents. On entering, he took up what appeared to be a candle, with a cord attached to it; the other end he deftly fastened to a switch at the entrance, by means of which the electricity which was waiting there poured up the wire hidden in the cord, glowed at the wick of the chinacandle, and we were able to pass to the end of the passage, uncoiling cord and wire as we went. That unlighted candle resembles the Christian worker, apart from the power of the Holy Ghost. Faith may be compared to the switch by means of which the saving might of God pours into our life and ministry.

It cannot be too strongly insisted on, that our faith is the absolute condition and measure of the exertion of God’s saving might. No faith, no blessing; little faith, little blessing; great faith, great blessing. According to our faith, so it is always done tous. The saving might of God’s glorious arm may be waiting close against us; but it is inoperative unless we are united to it by faith.;

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as The negative and positive sides of this great and important truth are presented in the texts before us: one of which complains that the arm of God is not revealed, because men have not believed the inspired report; the other affirms from the lips of the Master, that those who believe shall see the glory of God. The texts between them will help us to understand why some, who are best equipped for service, fail; while others, with very indifferent equipment, achieve great and lasting success.

I. THE ARM OF GOD. — This expression is often used in the older Scriptures, and everywhere signifies the active, saving energy of the Most High. We first meet with it in his own address to Moses: “I will redeem them with a stretched-out arm.” Then, in the triumphant shout that broke from two million glad voices beside the Red Sea — and frequently in the book of Deuteronomy, — — -we read of the stretched-out arm of Jehovah. It is a favourite phrase with the poets and prophets of Israel — the arm that redeems; the holy arm; the glorious arm; the bared arm of God. We have already noticed how it is bidden awake, and put on strength. This metaphor is somewhat different. The conception is that, owing to the unbelief of Israel, it lies inoperative, hidden under the heavy folds of Oriental drapery; whereas it might be revealed, raising itself aloft in vigorous and effective effort.

All that concerns us now ts the relation between faith and the Jorth-putting of God’s saving might. God’s arm was revealed at the Red Sea, making a path through its depths by which his ransomed might pass over. Then Moses’ faith was in eager and triumphant exercise, and the people believed the report which he had given of the words of Jehovah. But it sank into repose during the long forty years of wandering, because Israel believed not his word.

God’s arm was revealed at the Jordan, and through the remarkable career of Joshua; it cleft the river at flood, overthrew the walls of Jericho, chased in flight the armies of the aliens, restrained the deepening shadows of the night, and gave the Land of Promise to the chosen race; and this, because Joshua never wavered in his strong, heroic confidence. But again it sank paralysed and powerless to rest, when, in the days of the judges, the people ceased to exercise the faith to which nothing was impossible. Whenever the fire gleamed up from the dull, white ash, as in the days of Gideon, Barak, Jephthah, and Samson, instantly the arm of the Lord was made bare.

The arm of the Lord was revealed in the days when David’s faith realized that the living Lord was still amongst his people, well able to save without mail, or spear, or shield. What a springtide was that! The birds of holy song warbled sweetly under a clear heaven of love; the flowerets of nobility, righteousness, and truth begemmed the soil: the light was that of a morning without clouds. There was no standing against the onset of the soldiers, who‘in the cave of Adullam had acquired lessons of heroic faith as well as those of knightly chivalry. But again the arm of God relapsed into quiescence, and allowed the foes of his people to work their will even to their captivity, because Israel’s faith had become like the Temple of Solomon, a desecrated and ruined shrine.

As we are taught in the Epistle to the Hebrews, all the great exploits and episodes of Hebrew story were due to the faith which believed that God is a present force in history, and a Rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

II. THE LIFE OF THE SON OF Man. — As this chapter suggests, it seemed, from many points of view, a failure. The arm of the Lord was in Him, though hidden from all save the - handful who believed. Probably our Lord never wrought a miracle, unless faith was in exercise on the part either of the recipients or spectators of his saving help. The centurion, though a Gentile; the Syrophcenician woman, though accounted a dog; the leper, though an outcast pariah — drew from Him virtue that healed and saved: whilst the bulk of the nation, and especially the companions of his early life, missed the benediction, which had come so nigh them, because they enwrapt themselves in proud indifference. Through unbelief the branches were deprived of the richness of the Root of David. And the condition of Israel in the world to-day is due to persistent unbelief, which has cut them off from the help of the right arm of the Lord.

III. A SPECIMEN CASE. — For two days Christ had lingered beyond the Jordan, though urgently needed in Bethany, where life was ebbing fast, and tears were flowing which were not wholly due to the sickness and death of him whom Jesus loved. A sense of forlornness; an inability to account for the delayed advent of the dearest Friend, who neither came nor sent word — made those tears more bitter. The Master, however, was keenly sensitive to all that was taking place. He knew that sickness had become death, and said presently, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth.” That interval of silence and absence seems to have been filled with prayer; to which He referred in the words He spoke aloud at the grave, that the people might be led to attribute all the glory to his Father, and to appreciate the love and beauty of his character. Before our Lord left his hiding-place He knew that the Father had granted Him, in his human nature, the life of his friend. “I go,” said he, “to awake him out of sleep. I was glad that I was not there to stay the fall of life’s ebbing tide; because, in raising him from the dead, such a proof will be furnished of my oneness with Jehovah, as to compel your faith, and be a comfort and inspiration in all after days.”

But even though our Lord went to Bethany with the assurance that the arm of the Lord would certainly be made bare, yet He must of necessity have the co-operation and sympathy of some one’s faith.

Such faith He discovered in Martha. This is startling, and helpful. We should not have been surprised to learn that it was found in Mary; because her still and spiritual nature was so closely akin to his own — she had drunk so deeply into his words; she was capable of such a white-heat of love, consecration, and self-forgetting devotion. But we should not have expected Martha to manifest faith, to connect the stored life of Jesus with the charnel-house where Lazarus lay, four days dead. Yet so it befell. She met Jesus with the assurance that He possessed power enough to have averted death, had He only been in time; she declared her belief that his prayer could secure its will from God, and.confessed that for long, in her secret soul, she had believed that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, the long-expected Redeemer. These admissions on her part showed that faith was already within her soul, as a grain of mustard-seed, awaiting the summertide of God’s presence, the education of his grace.

There are many earnest Christians, whose energies are taxed to the uttermost by their ministry to others. Philanthropists, housewives, workers in every department of Christian service — - such are their engagements that they have no time to sit quietly at the feet of Christ, or mature great schemes of loving sympathy with his plans, as Mary did when she prepared her anointing-oil for her Lord’s burial. And yet they are capable of a great faith. Beneath the bustle and rush of life, the impulses of the Divine are being responded to; faith in the living Saviour is ripening to a golden harvest; forces are being generated which will surprise themselves and others. Christ will one day discover, reveal, and educate that faith to great exploits.

fle put a promise before her. “Thy brother shall rise again.” Faith feeds on promises, as the spark that trembles on the hearth grows by the fuel heaped on and around it. if we consider circumstances, we stagger and faint. But if we look away to the strong clear words of God, and through them to the Promiser, we become, like Abraham, strong in faith, and sure that what God has promised He is able also to perform. Make much of God’s Word: faith cometh by hearing. Listen to the report — it will induce belief, and this will secure the revelation of the Almighty arm.

He showed that its fulfilment might be expected here and now. Martha was quite prepared to believe that Lazarus would rise again at the last day; but she had no faith in the immediate vivification of the body that lay in its niche behind the stone. Jesus said, ‘‘I AM the Resurrection and the Life. Here and now is the power which, on that day of which you speak, shall awaken the dead; do but believe, and you shall see that resurrection anticipated.”

Ponder the force of this I aM. It is the present tense of the Eternal. At the burning bush, it was the first lesson that Moses had to learn. God is the I AM. He is; He is here; He is able and willing to do now all that He ever will do in the days that are yet to be. Man is so apt to postpone the miraculous and Divine, till some dim horizon-line has been attained and passed. God has blessed, and He will bless. God did marvels at the first Advent, and He will repeat them at the second. But the present is the period of Divine absenteeism — so we think. Oh to believe that Jesus is waiting to be all that He has ever been to souls, or will be! Oh to hear Him say, “I am Resurrection to the dead: I am the more abundant Life to all who live and believe in Me”!

fle aroused her expectancy. For what other reason did He ask that the stone might be rolled away? It is certain that it would have been perfectly easy for his voice to reach the ear of the dead through the stony doorway; and had He willed it, Lazarus could have emerged from the grave, though the stone still sealed its mouth. Almost certainly the direction to remove the stone was intended to awaken Martha’s expectation and hope that the arm of the Lord would presently be revealed. And it had the desired result. With quickened eagerness she endeavoured to arrest obedience to his mandate; and when the Lord persisted, and reminded her that this was the opportunity for her faith, her soul leaped up to receive with ardour the blessing He was there to give. She believed, and she beheld the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

The one aim for each of us should be to bring Christ and the dead Lazarus together. Death can no more exist when He is present, than night when the sun is rising. Corruption, impurity, sin, flee before Him to whom the Father gave to have life in Himself, and who came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. Let your faith make an inlet for the Life-giver into your circle of society, your church, your class, your home. Nothing will suffice if this is lacking. Eloquence, learning, position, these will fail. But faith, though it be of the weakest, simplest nature, will link the Saviour, who is alive for evermore, and has the keys of death and Hades, with those who have been in the graves of sin so long that corruption has asserted its foul dominion over every part of their nature.

Let us ask Christ, our Saviour, to work such faith in us; to develop it by every method of education and discipline; to mature it by his nurturing Spirit, until the arm of God is revealed in us and through us, and the glory of God is manifested before the gaze of men.

At the same time, it is not well to concentrate our thought too much on /az¢h, lest we hinder its growth. Look away from faith to the object of faith, and faith will spring of itself. It is the bloom of the soul’s health. See to it that thy soul is nourished and at rest: then faith will be as natural as scent to a flower, or bloom to a peach. Do not ask if thy faith is of the right sort; all faith is right, which is directed towards Him, whom God hath set forth to receive the loving devotion of all human hearts.