Luke 8:25

Where Is your faith?

Where is your faith?

It is as much as if He had said, “You thought that I was sleeping. But was it indeed only Me, or chiefly My eye, that slept? Was it not your faith.? You say, ‘Where is the Lord?’ but I say, ‘Where is your faith?’” It is a mistake, brethren, we are all making every day. We say,--“The Lord sleeps--the Lord sleeps.” But what is it,--“Your faith”sleeps. I begin by asking every one I am now addressing, “Where is your faith?” “Where is your faith?” Now tell me, is it in the First Great Source? or, is it in second causes?

1. It is astonishing how many men are putting their faith upon second causes! I can imagine the fisherman in the storm, looking at the wind and the gathering clouds, partly because they come with less trouble; partly from long habit; partly from the aversion which there is in the mind of men to every thing spiritual; but chiefly because men imagine they have no right to go up straight to God. Hence almost all men are found trying means as if they were ends; and God’s instruments as if they were gods. For instance, one man has a friend, and he hangs upon that friend, and you may see him behaving to that friend as if he considered that friend the arbiter of his life. Another is a man in business, and his study is about nothing every day but “his connection,” and it is plain that he looks to nothing but “his connection” to determine his rise or his ruin in the enterprise in which he is embarked. A third man is a farmer, and you will hear him talking about “the weather,” as if the crops had no other father but the sun and the rain. A fourth is a politician, and he makes the world turn--as upon a pivot--on the consideration whether this administration shall be in, or that. All are making their system of cause and effect; and they do not calculate upon the shadow of a doubt that if there is a prescribed cause, there must be the predicted event. Their whole hearts--their whole faith is in second cause. Now, brethren, we do not hesitate to arraign this trusting in second cause as sheer idolatry. It is the essential of God that He is final, and what is final is made God.

2. But I will turn to another class of life’s voyagers, and say, again, “Where is your faith?” Is it not in yourselves? Perhaps the fishermen on the Galilean lake thought it very little for them to cross those oft-traversed waters, and would have laughed at the idea of there being any danger in their barque landing in safety on the other side. Yet how little booted their skill and their confidence! There are two distinct ways in which persons put faith in themselves. One is, in trusting there is a sufficient measure of goodness in their own hearts: the other, is by admitting their hearts are very bad, but still, taking a compensation in something that they are doing.

3. But I turn to the third class, and I ask again, “Where is your faith?” and a thousand voices will answer me almost in this church, “Why, in God”; but I reply, “In what God?” But you say, “Oh, Him that is all mercy and all goodness.” All! and “all just!” Is not God all just? would He be just if He forfeited His own word? And has not He said it, “The soul that sinneth it shall die”? Has not He said, “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish”? Has He not said, “He that believeth not shall be damned”? Has not he made a particular requirement of you, that you must keep His whole law; and has He not made it as sure, as necessary a thing, that every sin shall lead on to misery, as every seed leads on to its own harvest? O, tell me, is it possible--in any view you may take of good government--that any breach of itslaws should pass unpunished? Is not the suffering of the offender part of the mercy--the centre of the mercy--of a grand administrator? Else, would not license, aye, and premium, too, be given to crime? and must not the whole empire pass into recklessness and misery? (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

Where is your faith?

1. “I believe in God.” How lightly, how carelessly, we repeat those solemn words, and yet what a universe of meaning lies in them!

2. Do we believe? Do we at all know what belief means? Do we suppose it to mean, “I am familiar with these formulae, I see no special reason for rejecting them.” Thou believest that there is one God. Thou doest well. The devils also believe; nay more, they tremble.

3. “I believe,” but, while with orthodox self-satisfaction we repeat our creeds, on which soul has dawned the tremendous responsibility of our belief, the transcendent obligation of all that it entails?

4. What, then, is wanting? Faith is wanting--that faith which is a possessing principle, an irresistible enthusiasm. Real faith--not the ineffectual pretence; not the faith which makes idols of formulae; not the faith which delights in rigid systems and fantastic self-delusions, groping in mediaeval traditions for a dead and material and exclusive Christ. Had we but faith as a grain of mustard-seed we should remove the mountains which overshadow and threaten to fall on us. (Archdeacon Farrar.)

Fear rebuked

One day when Stonewall Jackson, with his sister-in-law, was crossing the boiling torrent, just below the American falls at Niagara, in a slight boat manned by two oarsmen, the current so swirled the boat that the lady became terrified, believing they were going to the bottom. Jackson seized her by the arms, and turned to one of the men and said, “How often have you crossed here?” “I have been rowing people across, sir, for twelve years.” “Did you ever meet with an accident?” “Never, sir.” “Never were capsized? never lost a life?” “Nothing of the kind, sir!” Then turning in a somewhat peremptory tone, he said to the lady, “You hear what the boatman says, and unless you think you can take the oars and row better than he does, sit still and trust him as I do.” (Mackay.)