Faith Is Individual
The richest consolation to every faithful servant of Christ is this: In all ages and under all the dispensations of God, whatever may have been the condition of God’s people as a whole, it was the privilege of the individual believer to tread as lofty a path and enjoy as high communion as ever was known in the very brightest and balmiest days of the dispensation.
In every instance in which man collectively has been placed in a position of responsibility, he has utterly failed. Further, God never restores a failed witness. Rather, faith has always found its spring in the living God Himself, and the deeper the moral gloom all around, the brighter are the flashes of individual faith. The dark background of the corporate condition has thrown individual faith into bright relief. This line of truth has peculiar charms for my heart, and I have for many years found in it comfort and encouragement. I do not think it is possible to overstate its value and importance.
There is a strong tendency among God’s people to lower the standard of devotedness to the level of the general condition of things. This must be carefully guarded against, as it is destructive of all service and testimony. “The foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (2 Tim. 2:19). God is faithful. His foundation can never be moved, and it is the privilege of the individual believer to rest on that foundation and abide by that standard, come what may. How could the Baraks, the Gideons, the Jephthahs and the Samsons have stood their ground if they had allowed themselves to be influenced by the general condition of the people of God? Assuredly they would never have achieved those splendid victories recorded for our encouragement, had they succumbed to the general condition around them.
The Golden Calf
To illustrate this principle, let us turn to Exodus 33. At that moment, what was the condition of Israel? According to Exodus 32, the very highest and most privileged man in the whole congregation had made a golden calf! What a picture of the human heart! Who would have thought that the worshippers on the shore of the Red Sea should ever give utterance to such words as, “Make us gods which shall go before us”? Those who had said in their magnificent song, “Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like Thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?” had now made a golden calf! Let us not forget who it was that led the people into this most disastrous course of action. It was no less a personage than Aaron — the elder brother of the lawgiver himself. It tends to illustrate the exceeding folly of leaning on or looking to the very highest and best of men. In the early part of the Book of Exodus, Moses hesitated to go into Egypt at the bidding of God. But when he heard that Aaron should accompany him, he was ready to go. And yet this very man was the source of the deepest sorrow that Moses ever tasted. This was the man who had made the golden calf!
Outside the Camp
The heart of Moses might well sink as he beheld the whole congregation of Israel, with Aaron his brother at their head, sunk in abominable idolatry. All seemed hopelessly gone. But “the foundation of God standeth sure.” This is a grand and immutable truth in all ages. Nothing can touch the truth of God. It shines out all the brighter from amid the darkest shades into which man is capable of sinking. We can form but a very little idea of what the heart of Moses passed through when he saw his Lord displaced by a golden calf. But he could count on God, and he could also act for God. The two things always go together. “Let every one who names the name of the Lord withdraw from iniquity” (2 Tim. 2:19 JND). See how blessedly this practical principle was carried out by Moses, the man of God — a principle as true amid the appalling ruins of Christendom as in the day of the golden calf. “Moses took the tabernacle, and pitched it without the camp, afar off from the camp, and called it the tabernacle of the congregation. And it came to pass, that every one which sought the Lord went out unto the Tabernacle of the congregation, which was without the camp” (Ex. 33:77And Moses took the tabernacle, and pitched it without the camp, afar off from the camp, and called it the Tabernacle of the congregation. And it came to pass, that every one which sought the Lord went out unto the tabernacle of the congregation, which was without the camp. (Exodus 33:7)).
Here we have a bold and magnificent act. Moses felt that Jehovah and a golden calf could not be together, and hence if a calf was in the camp, Jehovah must be outside. Such was the simple reasoning of faith; faith always reasons aright. When the public body is all wrong, the path of individual faith is outside. It never can be right and, thanks be to God, it is never necessary to go on with iniquity. When iniquity is set up in that which assumes to be the witness for God on the earth, “depart” is the watchword for the faithful soul. Cost what it may, we are to depart. “Every one which sought the Lord” had to go outside of the defiled place to find Him, and yet that very place was none other than the camp of Israel where Jehovah had taken up His abode.
Thus we see that Moses on this occasion was preeminently a man for the crisis. He acted for God, and he was the honored instrument of opening up a path for God’s people whereby they might escape from pollution and enjoy the privilege of communion with God in an evil day. And as for himself, we learn what he gained by this marvelous transaction from the following record: “The Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend” (Ex. 33:1111And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle. (Exodus 33:11)). So it is in our day that no matter what the outward condition of God’s people may be, those wishing to be faithful are encouraged to depart from iniquity and then to enjoy as much communion with God as in the brightest days of the dispensation.
C. H. Mackintosh, adapted
Happiness of Faith
Christians might avoid much trouble and inconvenience if they would only believe what they profess—that God is able to make them happy without anything else. They imagine that if such a dear friend would die or such and such blessings be removed, they should be miserable, whereas God can make them a thousand times happier without them. To mention my own case — God has been depriving me of one mercy after another, but as every one was removed, He has come in and filled up its place, and now, when I am a cripple and not able to move, I am happier than ever I was in my life before, or ever expected to be, and if I had believed this twenty years ago, I might have been spared much anxiety.
Payson,
from Christian Truth, 17:119