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     1. Without Faith It Is Impossible to Please God   (27:56)
     2. The Battle Hymn of the Republic, excerpt   (0:46)

Hebrews 11:6.  But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

Psalm 37:5.  Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.

II Corinthians 1:20.  For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.

Ephesians 1:19.  [that ye may know] …what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power.

I Corinthians 15:25.  For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.

I Peter 1:6-7.  Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold trials, ⁷That the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire, may be found unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And it seems kind of cruel when God says, “Without faith it is impossible to please Him.”  Well, what does He expect?  Why doesn’t He do something?—then we’ll believe Him.  That’s the way the Jews dealt with God.  And when Jesus was upon this earth, He made that statement too.  He said, “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.”  God wants us to believe because of the Bible.  The Bible is sufficient: “All scripture is given that the man of God may be perfect.”  And here are the commands of the New Testament which make us eligible for “the inheritance of the saints in light.”  “He hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.”  In one place, He says, “I commend you to God, and to the word of His grace which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance.”  And this inheritance is “eternal.”  It’s “undefiled.”  It “fadeth not away.”  It’s all the “exceeding great and precious” blessings that Jesus Christ has purchased for us. 

And God wants us to come with that faith, honoring God, knowing that what God has promised, He not only is able to perform, but He has already performed it.  He has already purchased for us this great inheritance.  It’s there.  It’s for us to come and take it, no matter what things seem like.  And I think we ought to really learn that lesson that without faith it’s impossible to please Him—for instance, when He says, “In nothing be anxious.”  Well, we have somehow associated some religious significance to being anxious.

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We shall not be able to please God except by faith.  And faith is triumph over all symptoms, and over all things that seem contrary, because God is triumphant, because Jesus Christ has won the fight.  And no teaching is more plain, and made more real in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, than this: that “all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen”—what the Law could not do because it was weak in the flesh.  And that’s where the devil often tempts us.  We look at the flesh, and we think, “Well, maybe I made a mistake here, maybe I don’t know how to believe.  Maybe this and maybe that.”  Why that’s the wavering attitude.  You have no business to be like that.  My business is to look steadfastly at the Lord Jesus Christ who commands wind and waves, who has “all power in heaven and in earth.”  And we rob Him of His power, and we rob Him of His honor and His glory when we begin to waver in our attitude, and when we begin to be anxious.  I ought to fear anxiety as much as I fear any other sin—or even more.  That’s “the sin that doth so easily beset us.”  And we don’t realize how we have been saturated with unbelief.  It’s in the warp and woof of our being.

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Christ had to suffer these things, and He had to enter into His glory.  And now, He must manifest the “exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe.”  The Bible says that “He must reign.”  That doesn’t mean that He must be defeated.  Jesus Christ will never tell us when we get to heaven, “Well, you know, in that particular instance, in that particular trial you went through, I was defeated.  I wasn’t able.  I wasn’t up to it.”  He’ll never say that.  He is always up to it.  And the Apostle Peter tells us that, “though now, if need be, we are in heaviness through manifold temptations.”  He says these temptations must be.  For what purpose?  Not that we might be defeated, but that the trial of our faith might redound to the glory of God.

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I think we would do ourselves a very great favor if we studied about faith in the Bible.  We would be surprised that faith is only faith when it is absolute and total faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, not in our ability to believe—not in our holiness, or in our power, or in our attitudes, but faith in a great fact: “God hath raised Him from the dead.”

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“Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”  And that is my privilege, to belong to those who are blessed of God because having not seen, we have believed.  The fact that we don’t see doesn’t make the fact of none effect.  The fact that I don’t see Jesus Christ doesn’t mean that He is not here.  It only means that He is now here as the life-giving Spirit.  He said, “I cannot do for you now, but when He, the Spirit of truth is come, He shall guide you into all truth.  He shall teach you all things, and He shall answer all your prayers.”  “I ascend to My Father, and your Father, and verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, that will I do.” 

There is no greater joy than to go through the trial with Jesus Christ in this faith.  But it’s a great tribulation when you go through wavering and wondering in your heart.  God will take all that wonder out of you.  Faith comes by harkening to the word of God.  And that word of God is absolute, and absolutely sure—“Forever Thy word is settled in heaven.”  And when I meditate upon this word day and night, it is bound to create faith in my soul.  In fact, that’s where faith comes from.  That’s where the Kingdom of God comes from.

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Oh, when God showed me Jesus Christ, I entered into rest.  It is a wonderful, wonderful experience.  And who is it that enters into rest?  At that time, I asked a Pentecostal preacher, “how do we enter into rest?”  And… she said, “I don’t know.”  So I went to the Bible and found the answer: “we who have believed enter into rest.”  Believe what?  Why, believe what God has done.  “To them,” the Bible says, “the Gospel was preached as well as unto us, but it didn’t profit them any, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.”

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Abraham gave glory to God.  He was not weak, but “he waxed strong, through faith.”  The longer the trial lasted, the more the test tempted him and tested him, the more he looked at the promise, and the stronger his faith became.  And that’s the mark of true faith: it grows strong in trial.  “Out of weakness were made strong, they waxed valiant in fight.”  And there is a purpose in our being tested and tempted and tried.  It’s to give us the real kind of faith.  It’s to test our faith, and to make us have an inheritance among the saints. 

And we play with faith, and we don’t realize that without faith it is impossible to be saved.  It is by faith that we “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh.”  And that’s the reason God allows us to be tested.  It is not only that we should have the victory, but that Jesus Christ should have the victory.

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Martha Wing Robinson’s early wavering faith.  “Then, she settled it with God, and she realized that she had to stand on the Rock, and not jump off every once in a while and run down the road and see whether the glory wasn’t coming.  She was sure it would come.  And she said it did come in a marvelous way.  And she, of course, received a great deal more than she expected, but not until she gave up her waving attitude and gave up all her anxiety.”    (from 2:41)

HRW’s call into the ministry.  “He did it in His own way.  If I had pushed, or if I had allowed people to push me, or if I had become anxious, things would not have happened.”    (from 5:34)

A man whose wife was healed in spite of his unbelief.      (from 21:16)

Examples of faith in finances.  “If I were to tell today what God does in this work to supply our need, you’d be greatly surprised.”    (from 24:54)

The Autobiography of George Müller.  This document is a large facsimile of the 1861 book.

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