Hebrews 11:6

Heb_11:6

Without faith it is impossible to please Him

The nature and importance of faith

I.

THIS NATURE OF FAITH IN GENERAL. NOW the term, faith, expresses a confidence or persuasion of the truth of anything not self-evident, received upon the testimony of another. To have faith in the subjects of human testimony, requires a certain comprehension of the nature of the subjects, and a confidence in the credibility of the testimony under which those subjects are presented to our knowledge. Precisely the same circumstances appear to take place in reference to Divine testimony. We are satisfied as to the credibility of the testimony--that it comes from God. But the objects presented to us upon that testimony will become the actual objects of our faith, exactly to the extent and no further in which we understand them. Our comprehension of the object will always be the limit of our faith; and this faith will diminish or augment in the very degree in which our perception is clear or confused. But it is needful here to remark that the Divine testimony, though depending upon precisely the same process of mind as to its existence, and growth, and contraction, is far more difficult of acquirement and of retention than faith in human testimony. Is it inquired wherefore? The answer is that sin has crippled our power of judgment--that sin has deadened the spiritual sensibility which is absolutely essential to the perception of Divine truth. Supposing, therefore, the powers of understanding and of imagination to be equal in any two persons, he will comprehend the Christian revelation the most clearly who has the purest affections, who is in the highest degree detached from human objects, and who is the most conversant with the objects of the heavenly world. The purity of God; the evil of sin; the love of Christ; the manifestation of that Jove to the human soul; the hidden and holy intercourse of the heart with God; the necessity for atonement; the freeness of Divine grace; the renovation of the heart by the power and compassion of the great Comforter; the value of prayer; the fervour of gratitude; the desire to be with Christ; the secret calm of confidence in His eternal love--these, and many other subjects embodied in the testimonies of God, aresubjects with which an unholy, earthly heart cannot come into full contact. There may be a distant perception, indeed, even of these; but the affections that are low and sensual cannot perceive them so as to taste their value. And such is essential to their perception. The value which the Scriptures attach to faith, is hence no ground of surprise to him who has felt Christianity to be dear and healing to his heart. It has been by a Divine influence that he has come into contact with the spiritual meaning of Christianity; and his faith in that spiritual meaning has been the medium through which he came into such contact. He is therefore aware that no language can do justice to the worth of faith. It will thus appear that to faith belong all the essential blessings of Christianity. We come into intercourse with God; we rest under the shelter of the atonement; we are renewed in our tastes and inclinations; we acquire a home, a refuge; we regard the future as serene and bright; these blessings we acquire by faith, and by faith only. Nor is there any other conceivable way of embracing all the great and consoling realities of the gospel. Faith is, hence, the confidence of the penitent, and devout, and affectionate heart, as it reposes its weary sensations amidst the gracious assurances of God! It is farther evident from these statements, that faith will be often progressive, and often retrograde. Let the true Christian become unduly eager about earthly emoluments; let him diminish voluntarily the time he passes in secret converse with God; let him call away his thoughts from the character and friendship of his Saviour; let him thwart the precious influences of the Holy Spirit--and his faith will necessarily contract its operations; the finer and more ethereal parts of Christianity will begin to grow indistinct; his affections will be disordered; he will believe less, in reference to God and eternity, than he did before; his faith will shrink, or will vacillate as to real good and evil. On the other hand, let him grow more familiar with the lofty thoughts and aspirations of the gospel; let him discover more of the glory of Christ; let him derive from Him larger accessions of holy peace and joy; let the earth remove farther from his interior fellowship--and heaven, with all its bright anticipations, come into closer union with his understanding and his affections; and he will necessarily believe more of Christianity than he did before--he will know more of its hidden worth, as the increased purity of his affections is throwing down more of the barrier which sin had interposed between his soul and God; or, which is the same thing, between him and the richer parts of Christianity.

II. THE MORE LIMITED SENSE OF THE TERM FAITH, in the passage of Scripture before us. Faith in this chapter has special reference to those tenets of Christianity which unveil the future world--the triumph and the rest of the righteous; and in the text it seems to refer more specially to the confidence of the soul as to Gods intentions to render it eternally happy. The man who thus confides believes that God is, not simply that He exists, but that He exists as a kind, compassionate, generous God, to the soul that seeks Him.

III. THE INFLUENCE OF THIS FAITH UPON OUR HABITUALLY PLEASING GOD. NO one can read the Scriptures with attention without being struck by the intense anxiety of God to produce and perpetuate confidence in His mercy and grace. The whole of Gods intercourse with man is to excite his gratitude and attachment; to prove to him that Gods thoughts, in reference to generosity and Compassion, are far higher than the thoughts of men; and to rectify the fatal mistake that happiness lies in external objects, and in the emoluments of earth. Christianity is the exhibition of the Divine character. Its chief feature is holy mercy. Hence faith is essential to our intercourse with God. He who doubts Gods goodness, he who voluntarily severs himself from Gods care, and casts himself as an orphan upon his own resources, thus forces back the hand which is lifted up in his defence, and rejects the succours of omnipotence. Without faith it is impossible to please God. Is it then presumption to believe Gods assurances, and to rest the full burden of our hopes upon His promises? Shall we still cling to the deceptive assurances of the world, and rest upon the poor broken reeds of earth? Earthly blessings, moderately enjoyed and gratefully received, may embellish and smooth in part the rugged journey of life; but they cannot build up a final dwelling-place; they cannot occupy the place of God in the heart; they cannot fill up the deep void which sin has left in the human soul. They can have no fellowship with all its inner necessities. They can carry no balm to the wounds of conscience; they can draw out no sting from death; they can achieve no victory over the grave. This is the work of God; this is the victory of Jesus Christ! Thrice happy those whom God has made willing to confide in His power. Their defence is the munition of rocks. The outward walls may crumble to decay; but nought can touch their citadel of peace in Jesuss blood. (G. T. Noel, M. A.)

Of the nature of faith in general

I. WE WILL CONSIDER THE CAUSE OF FAITH, OR THE ARGUMENT WHEREBY IT IS WROUGHT.

1. Sense; hence it is commonly said that seeing is believing, that is, one of the best arguments to persuade us of anything. That faith may be wrought by this argument appears both from the nature of the thing, nothing being more apt to persuade us of anything than our senses, and from several expressions in Scripture. I will instance in one for all (Joh_20:8).

2. Experience, which, though it may be sensible, and then it is the same argument with sense, yet sometimes it is not, and then it is an argument distinct from it. As for example, a man may by experience be persuaded or induced to believe this proposition--that his will is free, that he can do this, or not do it; which is a better argument than a demonstration to the contrary, if there could be one.

3. Reasons drawn from the thing; which may either be necessary and concluding, or else only probable and plausible.

4. The authority and testimony of some credible person. Now two things give authority and credit to the relation, or testimony, or assertion of a person concerning anything; ability and integrity.

II. The second thing to be considered is THE DEGREES OF FAITH, AND THE DIFFERENCE OF THEM. NOW the capacity or incapacity of persons are infinitely various, and not to be reduced to theory; but supposing a competent capacity in the person, then the degrees of faith or persuasion take their difference from the arguments, or motives, or inducements which are used to persuade. Where sense is the argument, there is the firmest degree of faith, or persuasion. Next to that is experience, which is beyond any argument or reason from the thing. The faith or persuasion which is wrought in us by reasons from the thing, the degrees of it are as the reasons are: if they be necessary and concluding, it is firm and certain in its kind; if only probable, according to the degrees of probability, it hath more or less of doubting mixed with it. Lastly, the faith which is wrought in us by testimony or authority of a person takes its degrees from the credit of a person, that is, his ability and integrity. Now because all men are liars, that is, either may deceive, or be deceived, their testimony partakes of their infirmity, and so doth the degree of persuasion wrought by it; but God being both infallible and true His testimony begets the firmest persuasion, and the highest degree of faith in its kind. But then it is to be considered, that there not being a revelation of a revelation in infinitum, that this is a Divine testimony and revelation we can only have rational assurance; and the degree of the faith or persuasion which is wrought by a Divine testimony will be according to the strength of the arguments which we have to persuade us that such a testimony is Divine.

III. For the efficacy or operation of faith we are to consider, THAT THE THINGS WE MAY BELIEVE OR BE PERSUADED OF ARE OF TWO SORTS. Either,

1. They are such as do not concern me; and then the mind rests in a simple belief of them, and a faith or persuasion of such things has no effect upon me; but is apt to have, if ever it happen that the matter do concern me: or else,

2. The thing I believe or am persuaded of doth concern me; and then it hath several effects according to the nature of the thing I am persuaded of, or the degree of the persuasion, or the capacity of the person that believes or is persuaded. If the thing believed be of great moment the effect of the faith is proportionable, and so according to the degree of the persuasion; but if the person be indisposed to the proper effects of such a persuasion by the power of contrary habits, as it often happens, the effect will be obtained with more difficulty, and may possibly be totally defeated by casting off the persuasion; for while it remains it will operate, and endeavour and strive to work its proper effect.

IV. FOR THE KINDS OF FAITH, THEY ARE SEVERAL, ACCORDING TO THE VARIETY OF OBJECTS OF THINGS BELIEVED. I shall reduce them all under these two general heads.

1. Faith is either civil or human, under which I comprehend the persuasion of things moral, and natural, and political, and the like; or,

2. Divine and religious; that is, a persuasion of things that concern religion. I know not whether these terms be proper, nor am I very solicitous, because I know none fitter, and tell you what I mean by them. (Abp. Tillotson.)

Of a religious and divine faith:

I. A PERSUASION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL RELIGION, such as the light of nature could discover; such are the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and a future state.

1. Whether it may truly and properly be called faith or not? If the general notion of faith which I have fixed before, viz., that it is a persuasion of the mind concerning anything, be a true notion of faith, then there is no doubt but this may as properly be called faith, as anything can be; because a man may be persuaded in his mind concerning these things that there is a God, that our souls are immortal, that there is another state after this life. But besides this, if the Scripture speaks properly, as we have reason to believe it does, especially when it treats professedly of anything as the apostle here does, then this question is fully decided; for it is evident to any one that will but read this verse that the apostle doth here in this place speak of this kind of faith; that is, a belief or persuasion of the principles of natural religion.

2. What are the arguments whereby this faith, or the persuasion of these principles of natural religion, is wrought? They are such reasons as may be drawn from things themselves to persuade us hereof; as either from the notion and idea which we have of a God, that He is a being that hath all perfections, whereof necessary existence is one, and consequently that He must be; or else from the universal consent of all nations, and the generality of persons agreeing in this apprehension, which cannot be attributed reasonably to any other cause than to impressions stamped upon our understandings by God Himself; or (which is most plain of all) from this visible frame of the world, which we cannot, without great violence to our understandings, impute to any other cause than a Being endowed with infinite goodness, and power, and wisdom, which is that we call God. As for the other two principles of natural religion, the immortality of the soul, and a future state, after we believe a God we may be persuaded of these from Divine revelation; and that doth give us the highest and firmest assurance of them in the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

3. Whether this faith or persuasion of the principles of natural religion admit degrees or not? And what differences are observable in them? That it does admit degrees, that is that a man may be more or less persuaded of the truth of those principles, is evident from the heathens, some of whom did yield a more firm and unshaken assent to them; others entertained them with a more faint persuasion of them, especially of the immortality of the soul and a future state, about which most of them had many qualms and doubts. Of all the heathens Socrates seems to have had the truest and firmest persuasion of these things; which he did not only testify in words, but by the constancy, and calmness, and sedate courage which he manifested at his death. So that this faith and persuasion admits of degrees the difference whereof is to be resolved partly into the capacity of the persons who believe, and partly into the strength, or at least appearance of strength, in the arguments whereby it is wrought.

4. What are the proper and genuine effects of this faith or persuasion? Now that, in a word, is natural religion which consists in apprehensions of God suitable to His nature, and affections towards Him suitable to these apprehensions, and actions suitable to both.

5. In what sense this faith or persuasion of the principles of natural religion may be said to be Divine? In these two respects:

(1) In respect of the object of it, or matters to be believed, which are Divine, and do immediately concern religion, in opposition to that which I call a civil and human faith, which is of such things as do not immediately concern God and religion.

(2) In respect of the Divine effect of it, which are to make men religious, and like God.

II. The second sort of faith, which I call A PERSUASION OF THINGS SUPERNATURALLY REVEALED, OF THINGS WHICH ARE NOT KNOWN BY NATURAL LIGHT, BUT BY SOME MORE IMMEDIATE MANIFESTATION AND DISCOVERY FROM GOD. Thus we find our Saviour (Mat_16:15-17), opposeth Divine revelation to the discovery of natural reason and light.

1. Whether this may truly and properly be called faith? And that it may is evident, because the general definition of faith agrees to it; for a man may be persuaded in his mind concerning things supernaturally revealed; and the Scripture everywhere calls a persuasion of these matters by the name of faith. Bat besides this, it seems this is the adequate and only notion of faith as it hath been fixed by the schools, and is become a term of art. For the definition that the schools give of faith is this, that it is an assent to a thing credible, as credible. Now, say they, that is credible which relies upon the testimony of a credible person; and consequently a human faith is that which relies upon human testimony; and a Divine faith that which relies upon the testimony or authority of God.

2. What is the argument whereby this faith or persuasion of things supernaturally revealed is wrought in us? And this, by the general consent of all, is the testimony or authority of God some way or other revealing these things to us; whose infallible and unerring knowledge, together with His goodness and authority, gives us the highest assurance that He neither can be deceived Himself, nor will deceive us in anything that He reveals to us.

3. As to the degrees of this faith. Supposing men sufficiently satisfied that the Scriptures are the Word of God, that is, a Divine revelation; then all those who are sufficiently satisfied of this do equally believe the things contained in the Scriptures. Supposing any man be unsatisfied, and do make any doubt whether these books called Holy Scriptures, or any of them, be the Word of God, that is a Divine revelation; proportionably to the degree of his doubting concerning the Divine authority of the Scriptures, there will be an abatement of his faith as to the things contained in them. And upon this account I think it is that the Scripture speaks of degrees of faith; of growing and increasing in faith; of a strong faith; and of a weak faith, that is such a faith as had a great mixture of doubting; by which we are not to understand that they doubted of the truth of anything of which they were satisfied by a Divine revelation; but that they doubted whether such things were Divine revelations or not.

4. What are the proper and genuine effects of this faith? The proper and genuine effects of the belief of the Scriptures in general is the conformity of our hearts and lives to what we believe; that is, to be such persons and to live such lives as it becomes those who do heartily believe, and are really persuaded of the truth of the Scriptures. And if this be a constant and abiding persuasion it will produce this effect; but with more or less difficulty according to the disposition of the subject, and the weakness or strength of contrary habits and inclinations. More particularly the effects of this faith are according to the nature of the matter believed. If it be a history or relation of things past, or prophecy of things to come, it hath an effect upon men so far as the history or prophecy doth concern them. If it be a doctrine, it hath the effect which the particular nature and tendency of such a doctrine requires.

5. In what sense this faith of things supernaturally revealed may be said to be a Divine faith? blot only in respect of the matter and object of it, which are Divine things, such as concern God and religion and in respect of the Divine effects it hath upon those who believe these things (for in these two respects a persuasion of the principles of natural religion may be said to be a Divine faith); but likewise in respect of the argument whereby it is wrought, which is a Divine testimony. (Abp. Tillotson.)

Of the faith or persuasion of a Divine revelation

I. WHAT WE ARE TO UNDERSTAND BY A DIVINE REVELATION. A supernatural discovery or manifestation of things to us. I say supernatural because it may either be immediately by God, or by the mediation of angels; as most if not all the revelations of the Old Testament were; a supernatural discovery or manifestation, either immediately to our minds and inward faculties, or else mediately to our understandings, by the mediation of our outward senses; as by an external appearance to our bodily eyes, or by a voice and sound to the sense of hearing.

II. WHETHER A PERSUASION OF A DIVINE REVELATION MAY PROPERLY RE CALLED FAITH? To this I answer, that according to the narrow notion of faith which the schools have fixed, which is an assent to anything grounded upon the testimony and authority of God revealing it, a persuasion of a Divine revelation cannot properly be called faith, because it is irrational to expect that a man should have another Divine revelation to assure him that this is a Divine revelation; for then, for the same reason, I must expect another Divine revelation to assure me of that, and so without end. But according to the true and general notion of faith, which is a persuasion of the mind concerning anything, a persuasion of the mind concerning a Divine revelation may as properly be called faith as anything else, if men will but grant that a man may be so satisfied concerning a Divine revelation, as verily to believe and be persuaded that it is so.

III. How WE MAY COME TO BE PERSUADED OF A DIVINE REVELATION THAT IT IS SUCH; or by what arguments this persuasion is wrought in us?

1. As to those persons to whom the revelation is immediately made, the question is by what arguments or means they may come to be assured that any revelation which they have is really and truly such, and not a delusion or imposture.

(1) God can work in the mind of man a firm persuasion of a thing by giving him a clear and vigorous perception of it; and if so, then God can accompany His own revelations with such a clear and overpowering light as shall discover to us the divinity of them, and satisfy us thereof beyond all doubt and scruple.

(2) God never persuades a man of anything that contradicts the natural and essential notions of his mind and understanding. For this would be to destroy His own workmanship, and to impose that upon the understanding of a man which, whilst it retains its own nature and remains what it is, it cannot possibly admit.

(3) Supposing the thing revealed do not contradict the essential notions of our minds, no good and holy man hath reason to doubt of anything, whether it be revelation from God or not, of which he hath a clear and vigorous perception, and full satisfaction in his own mind that it is such.

(4) A good and holy man reflecting upon this assurance and persuasion that he hath may be able to give himself a reasonable account of it, and satisfy himself that it is not a stubborn belief and an obstinate conceit of things without any ground or reason.

2. What assurance can other persons, who have not the revelation immediately made to them, have of a Divine revelation? To this I shall answer by these propositions:

(1) That there are some means whereby a man may be assured of anothers revelation that it is Divine.

(a) Otherwise it would signify nothing, but only to the person that immediately had it; which would make void the chief end of most revelations, which are seldom made to particular persons for their own sakes only, but, for the most part, on purpose that they may be made known to others, which could not effectually be done unless there be some means whereby men may be assured of revelations made to another.

(b) None could be guilty of unbelief but those who had immediate revelation made to them. For no man is guilty of unbelief that is not obliged to believe; but no man can be under any obligation to believe anything, who hath not sufficient means whereby he may be assured that such a thing is true.

(2) The private assurance and satisfaction of another concerning a revelation made to him can signify nothing at all to me, to assure me of it. For what satisfaction is it to me that another may say he hath a revelation, unless I have some means to be assured that what he saith is true? For if I must believe every spirit, that is every man that says he is inspired, I lie open to all possible impostures and delusions, and must believe every one that either foolishly conceits or falsely pretends that he hath a revelation.

(3) That miracles wrought for the confirmation of any Divine testimony or revelation made to another are a sufficient means whereby those who have not the Divine revelation immediately made to them may be assured that it is Divine; I say these are sufficient means of assurance in this case. But here we must distinguish between doubtful and unquestionable miracles.

IV. WHETHER THIS FAITH CONCERNING A DIVINE REVELATION MADE TO OTHERS NO ADMIT OF DEGREES? That it doth is evident from these expressions which the Scripture useth, of increasing faith, of growing in it, of a weak and strong faith, all which plainly supposeth degrees. And here it will be proper to inquire what is the highest degree of assurance which we can have concerning a Divine revelation made to another, that it is such; whether it be an infallible assurance, or only an undoubted certainty.

1. That infallibility is not essential to Divine faith, and necessarily included in the notion of it; which I prove thus. Divine faith admits of degrees, as I have showed before; but there can be no degree of infallibility. Infallibility is an impossibility of being deceived; but there are no degrees of impossibility, one thing is not more impossible than another; but all things that are impossible are equally so.

2. That the assurance which we have of the miracles wrought for the confirmation of the gospel is not an infallible assurance.

3. That an undoubted assurance of a Divine revelation that it is such, is as much as in reason can be expected. No man pretends to a Divine revelation that there is a God; but only to have rational satisfaction of it, such as leaves no just or reasonable cause to doubt of it. And why then should any desire greater assurance of a Divine revelation than he hath of a God?

4. An undoubted assurance is sufficient to constitute a Divine faith. Do not men venture their estates in traffic to places they never saw, because they have it from credible persons that there are such places, and they have no reason to doubt their testimony; and why should not the same assurance serve in greater matters if an undoubted assurance of a lesser benefit and advantage will make men venture as much? Why should any man desire greater assurance of anything than to have no just reason to doubt it; why more than so much as the thing is capable of? I shall only add this: that nothing hath been more pernicious to Christian religion than the vain pretences of men to greater assurance concerning things relating to it than they can make good; the mischief of which is this--that when discerning and inquisitive men find that men pretend to greater matters than they can prove, this makes them doubt of all they say, and to call in question Christianity itself. Whereas if men would be contented to speak justly of things, and pretend to no greater assurance than they can bring evidence for, considerate men would be apt to believe them.

V. WHAT IS THE PROPER AND GENUINE EFFECT OF THIS FAITH OF A DIVINE REVELATION? I answer, a compliance with the design and intention of it.

VI. IN WHAT RESPECT THIS MAY BE CALLED A DIVINE FAITH. TO this I answer, not only in respect of the object of it, and the argument whereby it is wrought, and the effect of it; but, likewise, in respect of the author and efficient of it, which is the Divine Spirit. (Abp. Tillotson.)

Of the testimony of the Spirit to the truth of the gospel

I. IN RESPECT OF THE OUTWARD EVIDENCE WHICH THE SPIRIT OF GOD GIVES US TO PERSUADE US TO BELIEVE. And if this be not that which divines mean by the testimony of the Spirit in this matter, yet I think it is that which may most properly be so called. Now the Spirit of God did outwardly testify concerning Jesus, that He was the Messias, and came from God; and that the doctrine which He taught was Divine.

1. In the voice from heaven, which accompanied the descending of the Spirit upon Him (Mat_3:17).

2. In those miracles which Christ Himself wrought by the Spirit of God, which were so eminent a testimony of the Spirit of God, that the resisting of the evidence of those miracles, and the attributing of them to the devil, is by our Saviour called a blasphemy against the Holy Ghost.

3. In the great miracle of His resurrection from the dead.

4. In the effusion of the Spirit upon the apostles, who were to preach Christ and His doctrine to the world; and that it might carry its evidence along with it.

II. FAITH IS IN A PECULIAR MANNER ATTRIBUTED TO THE SPIRIT OF GOD, IN RESPECT OF THE INWARD EFFICACY AND OPERATION OF THE DIVINE SPIRIT UPON THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THOSE WHO SINCERELY AND EFFECTUALLY BELIEVE AND ENTERTAIN THE GOSPEL.

1. By strengthening the faculty, that is, raising and enabling our understanding to yield assent to the gospel. God is said, in Scripture, to enlighten the eyes of our understandings, which we may, if we please, understand in this sense; although that may be done by propounding such truths to us as we were ignorant of before, and could not have discovered, unless they had been revealed.

2. By enlightening and discovering the object, or thing to be believed. In the case we are speaking of, the object or thing to be believed is the gospel: now we may imagine the Spirit of God may work a faith or persuasion of this in us, by revealing or discovering to us this proposition, that the gospel is true.

3. By propounding and offering to us such arguments and evidence as are apt to persuade us of the truth of the gospel. And this, the Spirit of God, which inspired the writers of the Scripture, doth mediately by the Scriptures, and those characters of Divinity which are in the doctrines contained in them; and by those miracles which are there credibly related to be wrought by the Spirit of God, for the confirmation of that doctrine. And besides this, the Spirit of God may, when He pleaseth, and probably often doth, immediately suggest those arguments to our minds, and bring them to our remembrance.

4. By holding our minds intent upon this evidence, till it hath wrought its effect upon us.

5. By removing the impediments which hinder our effectual assent to the gospel. And in this and the last particular I conceive the work of the Spirit of God, in the producing of faith, principally to consist.

6. By furthering and helping forward the efficacy of this persuasion upon our hearts and lives, in the first work of conversion and regeneration, and in the progressive work of sanctification afterward, both which the Scripture doth everywhere attribute to the Spirit of God, as the author and efficient cause.

Lessons:

1. We may learn from hence to attribute all the good that is in us, or that we do in any kind, to God.

III. THOUGH FAITH BE THE GIFT OF GOD, YET THOSE THAT BELIEVE NOT ARE FAULTY UPON THIS ACCOUNT, THAT THEY QUENCH AND RESIST THE BLESSED MOTIONS OF GODS SPIRIT, and the influence and operation of the Spirit of God, which accompany the truth of the gospel to the minds of men, and produce their effect wherever they are not opposed and rejected by the prejudice and perverseness of men.

IV. Let us depend upon God for every good gift, and EARNESTLY BEG THE ASSISTANCE AND INFLUENCE OF HIS HOLY SPIRIT, WHICH IS SO NECESSARY TO US TO BEGET FAITH IN US, AND TO PRESERVE AND MAKE IT EFFECTUAL UPON OUR HEARTS AND LIVES. Bread is not more necessary to the support of our natural life, than the Holy Spirit of God to our spiritual life. For our encouragement to ask this gift of Gods Holy Spirit, our Saviour hath told us that God is very ready to bestow it upon us (Luk_11:11-13). (Abp. Tillotson.)

The efficacy, usefulness, and reasonableness, of Divine faith

I. WITHOUT FAITH THERE CAN BE NO RELIGION. And this will appear by inquiring into the nature of all human actions, whether civil or religious; and this is common to both of them, that they suppose some kind of faith or persuasion. For example, husbandry, or merchandise; no man will apply himself to these, but upon some belief or persuasion of the possibility and necessity, or at least usefulness and convenience, of these to the ends of life. So it is in Divine and religious things; nothing is done without faith. No man will worship God unless he believe there is a God; unless he be persuaded there is such a being, which, by reason of his excellency and perfection, may challenge our veneration; and unless he believe the goodness of this God, that He will reward those that diligently serve Him. So likewise no man can entertain Christ as the Messias and Saviour of the world, and yield obedience to His laws, unless he believes that He was sent of God, and ordained by Him to be a Prince and a Saviour. So that you see the necessity of faith to religion.

II. THE INFLUENCE THAT A DIVINE FAITH HATH UPON MEN TO MAKE THEM RELIGIOUS.

1. A true Divine faith supposeth a man satisfied and persuaded of the reasonableness of religion. He that verily believes there is a God, believes there is a being that hath all excellency and perfection, that is infinitely good, and wise, and just, and powerful, that made and preserves all things. Now he that believes such a Being as this, cannot but think it reasonable that He should be esteemed and adored by all those creatures that are sensible and apprehensive of these excellences; not only by constant praise of Him, but by a universal obedience to His will, and a cheerful submission to His pleasure. For what more reasonable than gratitude? And seeing He is truth itself, and hath been pleased to reveal His will to us, what can be more reasonable than to believe all those discoveries and revelations which God, who cannot lie, hath made to us, and to comply with the intention of them? And seeing He is the original pattern of all excellency and perfection, what can be more reasonable than to imitate the perfections of the Divine nature, and to endeavour to be as like God as we can? And these are the sum of all religion.

2. A true Divine faith supposeth a man satisfied and persuaded of the necessity of religion; that is, that it is necessary to every mans interest to be religious; that it will be highly for our advantage to be so, and eminently to our prejudice to be otherwise; that if we be so we shall be happy, if we be not we shall be miserable and undone for ever.

(1) From the nature and reason of the thing. Every man that believes a God, must believe Him to be the supreme good; and the greatest happiness to consist in the enjoyment of Him; and a separation from Him to be the greatest misery. Now God is not to be enjoyed but in a way of religion. Holiness makes us like to God, and likeness will make us love Him; and love will make us happy in the enjoyment of Him; and without this it is impossible to be happy.

(2) Every man who believes the revelations which God hath made, cannot but be satisfied how much religion is his interest from the promises and threatenings of Gods Word. APPLICATION:

1. This shows why there is so little of true religion in the world; it is for want of faith, without which it is impossible for men to be religious. If men were verily persuaded that the great, and holy, and just God looks continually upon them, and that it is impossible to hide from Him anything that we do, they would not dare to commit any sin in His sight, and under the eye of Him who is their Father and Master, their Sovereign and their Judge, their Friend and Benefactor; who is invested with all these titles, and stands to us in all these relations, which may challenge reverence and respect. Did men believe that they shall live for ever, and that after this short life is ended they must enter upon eternity; did men believe this, would they not with all possible care and diligence endeavour to attain the one and avoid the other? Did men believe the Scripture to be the Word of God, and to contain matters of the highest importance to our everlasting happiness, would they neglect it and lay it aside, and study it no more than a man would do an almanac out of date.

2. If faith have so great an influence upon religion, then the next use shall be to persuade men to believe. No man can be religious that doth not believe these two things:

(1) The principles of natural religion--that there is a God; that His soul is immortal; and that there are future rewards.

(2) That the Scriptures are the Word of God; or, which comes all to one, that the doctrine contained in them is a Divine revelation. Therefore whoever would persuade men to be religious, he must begin here; and whoever would improve men in religion and holiness, he must labour to strengthen this principle of faith. (Abp. Tillotson.)

Faith

The old Assemblys Catechism asks, What is the chief end of man? and its answer is, To glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever. The answer is exceedingly correct; but it might have been equally truthful if it had been shorter. The chief end of man is to please God; for in so doing he will please himself. He that pleases God is, through Divine grace, journeying onward to the ultimate reward of all those that love and fear God; but he who is ill-pleasing to God must, for Scripture has declared it, be banished from the presence of God, and consequently from the enjoyment of happiness. If then, we be right in saying that to please God is to be happy, the one important question is, how can I please God? And there is something very solemn in the utterance of our text: Without faith it is impossible to please God. That is to say, do what you may, strive as earnestly as you can, live as excellently as you please, make what sacrifices you choose, be as eminent as you can for everything that is lovely and of good repute, yet none of these things can be pleasing to God unless they be mixed with faith.

I. First, for the EXPOSITION. What is faith?

1. The first thing in faith is knowledge. Search the Scriptures, then, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Christ; and by reading cometh knowledge, and by knowledge cometh faith, and through faith cometh salvation.

2. But a man may know a thing, and yet not have faith. I may know a thing, and yet not believe it. Therefore assent must go with faith; that is to say, what we know we must all agree unto, as being most certainly the verity of God.

3. But a man may have all this, and yet not possess true faith; for the chief part of faith lies in the last head, namely, in an affiance to the truth; not the believing it merely, but the taking hold of it as being ours, and in the resting on it for salvation. Recumbency on the truth was the word which the old preachers used. You will understand that word. Leaning on it; saying, This is truth, I trust my salvation on it. Now, true faith, in its very essence rests in this--a leaning upon Christ. It will not save me to know that Christ is a Saviour; but it will save me to trust Him to be my Saviour.

II. And now we come to the ARGUMENT--why, without faith, we cannot be saved.

1. Without faith it is impossible to please God. And I gather it from the fact that there never has been the case of a man recorded in Scripture who did please God without faith.

2. But the next argument is, faith is the stooping grace, and nothing can make man stoop without faith. Now, unless man does stoop, his sacrifice cannot he accepted. The angels know this. When they praise God, they do it veiling their faces with their wings. The redeemed know it. When they praise God, they cast their crowns before His feet.

3. Faith is necessary to salvation, because we are told in Scripture that works cannot save. To tell a very familiar story, and even the poorest may not misunderstand what I say: a minister was one day going to preach. He climbed a hill on his road. Beneath him lay the villages, sleeping in their beauty, with the cornfields motionless in the sunshine; but he did not look at them, for his attention was arrested by a woman standing at her door, and who, upon seeing him, came up to him with the greatest anxiety, and said, Oh, sir, have you any keys about you? I have broken the key of my drawers, and there are some things that I must get directly. Said he, I have no keys. She was disappointed, expecting that every one would have some keys. But suppose, he said, I had some keys, they might not fit your lock, and therefore you could not get the articles you want. But do not distress yourself, wait till some one else comes up. But, said he, wishing to improve the occasion, have you ever heard of the key of heaven? Ah! yes, she said, I have lived long enough, and I have gone to church long enough, to know that if we work hard and get our bread by the sweat of our brow, and act well towards our neighbours, and behave, as the catechism says, lowly and reverently to all our betters, and if we do our duty in that station of life in which it has pleased God to place us, and say our prayers regularly, we shall be saved. Ah! said he, my good woman, that is a broken key, for you have broken the commandments, you have not fulfilled all your duties. It is a good key, but you have broken it. Pray, sir, said she, believing that he understood the matter, and looking frightened, What have I left out? … Why, said he, the all-important thing, the blood of Jesus Christ. Dont you know it is said, the key of heaven is at His girdle; He openeth, and no man shutteth; He shutteth, and no man openeth? And explaining it more fully to her, he said, It is Christ, and Christ alone, that can open heaven to you, and not your good works. What, minister, said she, are our good works useless, then? No, said he, not after faith. If you believe first, you may have as many good works as you please; but if you believe, you will never trust in them, for if you trust in them you have spoilt them, and they are not good works any longer. Have as many good works as you please, still put your trust wholly in the Lord Jesus Christ, for if you do not, your key will never unlock heavens gate.

4. Again: without faith it is impossible to be saved, and to please God, because without faith there is no union to Christ. Now, union to Christ is indispensable to our salvation. If I come before Gods throne with my prayers, I shall never get them answered, unless I bring Christ with me.

5. Without faith it is impossible to please God, because it is impossible to persevere in holiness without faith.

III. And now in conclusion, THE QUESTION, the vital question. Have you faith?

1. He that has faith has renounced his own righteousness.

2. True faith begets a great esteem for the person of Christ.

3. He that has true faith will have true obedience. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Faith essential to pleasing God

I. THE APOSTLE ASSERTS THAT FAITH IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL TO THE PLEASING OF GOD.

1. For, first, without faith there is no capacity for communion with God at all. The things of God are spiritual and invisible; without faith we cannot recognise such things, but must be dead to them.

2. Without faith the man himself is not pleasing to God. Faith in Christ makes a total change in our position towards God--we who were enemies are reconciled; and from this comes towards God a distinct change in the nature of all our actions: imperfect though they be, they spring from a loyal heart, and they are pleasing to God.

3. Remember that, in human associations, want of confidence would prevent a mans being well-pleasing to another. When the creature dares to doubt his Creator, how can the Creator be pleased?

4. Unbelief takes away the common ground upon which God and man can meet. According to the well-worn fable, two persons who are totally different in their pursuits cannot well live together: the fuller and the charcoal-burner were obliged to part; for whatever the fuller had made white, the collier blackened with his finger. If differing pursuits divide, much more will differing feelings upon a vital point. It is Jesus whom Jehovah delights to honour; and if you will not even trust Jesus with your souls salvation, you grieve the heart of God, and He can have no pleasure in you.

5. Want of faith destroys all prospect of love.

6. Want of faith will create positive variance on many points.

7. By what means can we hope to please God, apart from faith in Him? By keeping all the commandments? Alas! you have not done so. If you do not believe in Him you are not obedient to Him. We are bound to obey with the mind by believing, as well as with the hand by acting. Remember the impossibility of pleasing the Lord without faith, and do not dash your ship upon this iron-bound coast.

II. THE APOSTLE MENTIONS TWO ESSENTIAL POINTS OF FAITH. He begins by saying, He that cometh to God must believe that He is. Note the key-word must: it is an immovable, insatiable necessity. Before we can walk with God, it is clear that we must come to God. Naturally, we are at a distance from Him, and we must end that distance by coming to Him, or else we cannot walk with Him, nor be pleasing to Him. Believe that God is as truly as you are; and let Him be real to you. Believe that He is to be approached, to be realised, to be, in fact, the great practical factor of your life. Hold this as the primary truth, that God is most influential upon you; and then believe that it is your business to come to Him. But there is only one way of coming to Him, and you must have faith to use that way. Yet all this would be nothing without the second point of belief. We must believe that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. We seek Him, first, when we begin by prayer, by trusting to Jesus, and by.calling upon the sacred name, to seek salvation. Afterwards we seek God by aiming at His glory, by making Him the great object for which we live.

III. WE WILL NOW GATHER A FEW LESSONS FROM WHAT THE APOSTLE HAS TAUGHT US.

1. First, then, the apostle teaches us here by implication that God is pleased with those who have faith The negative is often the plainest way of suggesting the positive.

2. Learn, next, that those who have faith make it the great object of their life to please God.

3. Next, note, the apostle teaches us here that they who have faith in God are always coming to God; for He speaks of the believer as He that cometh to God. You not only come to Him, and go away from Him, as in acts of prayer and praise; but you are always coming; your life is a march towards Him.

4. God will see that those who practise faith in Him shall have a reward. God Himself is enough for the believer.

5. Those who have no faith are in a fearful case. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Trust gratifies

The Cottager and Artisan gives the following anecdote of the late Lord Shaftesbury:--I was one day, he said, about to cross the street in one of the great thoroughfares of London. It was very crowded, and a little girl all alone was much puzzled as to how she was to get over. I watched her walking up and down, and scanning the faces of those who passed to see if there were any whom she could trust, but for a long time she seemed to scan in vain. At last she came to me, and looking timidly up in my face, whispered, Please, sir, will you lift me over? And, Lord Shaftesbury adds, that little childs trust was the greatest compliment I ever had in my life.

Value of faith

A New-Years wish of Romaine for his people and for himself was: God grant that this may be a year famous for believing. That is a wish that the most advanced century will never outgrow. Such a year will be famous indeed. Mighty works and mighty men are found where there is famous faith. The measure of the possibility of a year great in believing is the measure of the Infinite God Himself. (Sword and Trowel.)

He that cometh to God

Access to God:

It is a wonderful idea, the idea of the infinite, almighty, eternal Being, as to be approached and communicated with by man. If we might allow ourselves in such an imagination, as that the selected portion of all humanity, the very best and wisest persons on earth, were combined into a permanent assembly, and invested with a sovereign authority--the highest wisdom, virtue, science, and power thus united--would not a perfectly free access for the humblest, poorest, most distressed, and otherwise friendless, to such an assemblage, with a certainty of their most kind and sedulous attention being given--of their constant will to render aid--of their wisdom and power being promptly exercised--would not this be deemed an inestimable privilege to all within the compass of such an empire? But take a higher position, and suppose that there were such an economy that the most illustrious of the departed saints held the office of being practically, though unseen, patrons, protectors, assistants, guides, to men on earth; that the spirits of patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, could be drawn, by those who desired it, to a direct personal attention, and to an exercise of their benignity and interference--would not this appear a resource of incalculable value? But there is another far loftier ascension. We are informed of a glorious order of intelligences that have never dwelt in flesh; many of whom may have enjoyed their existence from a remoteness of time surpassing what we can conceive of eternity; with an immense expansion of being and powers; with a perpetual augmentation of the goodness inspired by their Creator; and exercising their virtues and unknown powers in appointed offices of beneficence throughout the system of unnumbered worlds. Would it not seem a pre-eminent privilege, if the children of the dust might obtain a direct communication with them; might invoke them, accost them, draw them to a fixed attention, and with a sensible evidence of their indulgent patience and celestial benignity? Would not this seem an exaltation of felicity, throwing into shade everything that could be imagined to be derived to us from the benevolence and power of mortal or glorified humanity? Now, here we are at the summit of created existence; and up to this sublime elevation we have none of these supposed privileges. What, then, to do next? Next, our spirits have to raise their thoughts to an awful elevation above all subordinate existence in earth and heaven, in order to approach a presence where they may implore a beneficent attention, and enter into a communication with Him who is uncreated and infinite; a transition compared to which the distance from the inferior to the nobler, and then to the noblest of created beings, is reduced to nothing; as one lofty eminence on an elevated mountain--and a higher--and the highest--but thence to the starry heavens! But think, who is it that is thus to come to God? Man! little, feeble, mortal, fallen, sinful man! He is, if we may speak in such language, to venture an act expressly to arrest the attention of that stupendous Being. The purpose is to speak to Him in a personal manner; to detain Him in communication. The approaching petitioner is to utter thoughts, for God to admit them into His thoughts! He seeks to cause his words to be listened to by Him whose own words may be, at the very time, commanding new creations into existence. But reflect, also, that it is an act to call the special attention of Him whose purity has a perfect perception of all that is evil in the creature that approaches Him; of Him whom the applicant is conscious he has not, to the utmost of his faculties, adored or loved: alas! the very contrary! What an amazing view is thus presented of the situation the unworthy mortal is placed in, the position which he presumes to take, in coming to God. A sinful being immediately under the burning rays of Omnipotent Holiness! The idea is so fearful, that one might think it should be the most earnest desire of the human soul that there should be some intervention to save it from the fatal predicament. No wonder, then, that the most devout men of every age of the Christian dispensation have welcomed with gratitude the doctrine of a Mediator, manifested in the person of the Son of God, by whom the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man are, as it were, kept asunder; and a happy communication can take place through the medium of One who stands before the Divine Majesty of Justice, in mans behalf, with a propitiation and a perfect righteousness. Thus far, and too long, we have dwelt on the wonderfulness of the fact and the greatness of the privilege of coming to God. We have to consider, a little, with what faith this is to be done. Must believe that He is. Must have a most absolute conviction that there is one Being infinitely unlike and superior to all others; the sole Self-existent, All-comprehending, and All-powerful; a reality in such a sense that all other things are but precarious modes of being, subsisting simply in virtue of His will;--must pass through and beyond the sphere of sense, to have a spiritual sight of Him that is invisible; and, more than merely a principle held in the understanding, must verify the solemn reality in a vitally pervading sentiment of the soul. And what a glory of intellect and faith thus to possess a truth which is the sun in our mental sphere, and whence radiate all the illuminations and felicities that can bless the rational creation! And what a spectacle of debasement and desolation is presented to us, when we behold the frightful phenomenon of a rational creature disbelieving a God! But how easily it may be said, We have that faith; we never denied or doubted that there is such a Being. Well; but reflect, and ascertain in what degree the general tenor of your feelings, and your habits of life, have been different from what they might have been if you had disbelieved or doubted. The effectual faith in the Divine existence always looks to consequences. In acknowledging each glorious attribute, it regards the aspect which it bears on the worshipper, inferring what will therefore be because that is. It is not a valid faith in the Divinity, as regarded in any of His attributes, till it excite the solicitous thought, And what then? He is, as supreme in goodness; and what then? Then, how precious is every assurance from Himself that He is accessible to us. Then, is it not the truest insanity in the creation to be careless of His favour? Then, happy they who obtain that favour, by devoting themselves to seek it. Then, let us instantly and ardently proceed to act on the conviction that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. This faith is required in consideration of the intention (might we presume to say, reverently, the sincerity of the heavenly Father in calling men to come to Him. I have not said, Seek ye Me in vain. To what purpose are they thus required to make His favour the object of their eternal aspiration; to forego all things rather than this. Why thus summoned, and trained, and exercised, to a lofty ambition far above the world? Not to frustrate all this labour, not to disappoint them of the felicity to which they continually aspire! They must believe that He is a rewarder; that He is not thus calling them up a long, laborious ascent, only that they may behold His glorious throne, come near to His blissful paradise, do Him homage at its gate, and then be shut out. Consider again: it is because there is a Mediator, that sinful men are authorised to approach to God, seeking that--no more than that--which the mysterious appointment was made, in Divine justice and mercy, for the purpose of conferring on them. Then they must believe that this glorious office cannot but be availing to their success. What has been appointed, in the last resort, in substitution and in remedy of an antecedent economy, because that has failed, must be, by eminence, of a nature not itself to fail. They that come to God in confidence on this new Divine constitution, will find that He, in justice to His appointment of a Mediator, will grant what is promised and sought in virtue of it; in other words, will be a rewarder for Christs sake. And what is that in which it will be verified to them that He is a rewarder? For what will they have to adore and bless Him as such? For the grandest benefits which even He can impart in doing full justice to the infinite merits of the appointed Redeemer. But the important admonition, to be repeated here in concluding, is, that all this is for them that diligently seek; so habitually, importunately, perseveringly, that it shall in good faith be made the primary concern of our life; so that, while wishes and impulses to obtain are incessantly springing from the busy soul in divers directions, there shall still be one predominant impulse directed towards heaven. And, if such representations as we have been looking at be true, think what might be obtained by all of us, who have them at this hour soliciting our attention, on the supposition that we all should henceforward be earnest applicants to the Sovereign Rewarder. Think of the mighty amount of good, in time and eternity, as our collective wealth; and of the value of every individual share. (John Foster.)

Postulates of prayer

He that cometh to God--this is a special characterisation of prayer. It seems to localise the omnipresent God. To come to Him is to be vividly conscious of Him, and to realise His goodness and grace; to touch Him, and speak to Him.

I. The first postulate of prayer is BELIEF IN THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. If I think of God as a universal ether, as a highly-sublimated steam which pervades and works the machine of the universe, I can no more pray to Him than I could pray to the steam of the locomotive to put me down at such and such a station. If I think of God as an unconscious something, idea, or what else, which is necessarily and unconsciously developing itself into the universe, I can no more pray to that than I can to the principle of evolution. If God be not a person, if He be a mere force, as pray to that I might as well say to gravitation, which has broken my head, Heal me, or to time, which has left me behind, Wait for me.

II. We must not only believe that God is, but also that He is the rewarder of them that seek after Him, which involves as a second postulate of prayer that GOD HAS POWER TO HEAR AND ANSWER PRAYER. Prayer, it is said, has a great reflex action. It certainly has. Going over and giving thanks for Gods mercies excites my gratitude, even though there be no God to receive my thanks. But I would not so befool myself as to give thanks, if I did not believe God is to reward my thanks by receiving them. A celebrated scientific lecturer, while insisting on the operation of law, once said: The united voice Of this assembly could not persuade me that I have not at this moment the power to lift my arm if I wished to do so. And if, in spite of gravitation, man has this power, surely we cannot deny a corresponding power to God. In answer to my childs prayer I can lift my arm, though gravitation operates to keep it down. And in answer to my prayer, God my Father, being no less personal than I, can do what is analogous to my lifting my arm. He can subordinate, combine His laws according to His mighty power and wisdom, so that, without dishonouring, but rather honouring them in using them, He brings about the result, which is the reward of my prayer.

III. But to reward, there must be something more than the power; there must be the grace. We note, then, as the third postulate of prayer, GODS WILLINGNESS TO REWARD. Some, learning that this earth is but a small part of the solar system, and the solar system but a mote in the sunbeam of the universe, say, with more than the psalmists meaning: Well, what is man that God should be mindful of him, or the son of man that God should visit him? Why should God answer the prayers of one so insignificant? The question would have force if man were nothing more than matter. But there is a spirit in man, and the breath of God hath given him understanding; we are His offspring. A solar system, therefore, might expire, but it would touch God less than the cry of one of His children. Insignificant man is materially, but not spiritually. He has a quality transcending all matter; he has a life which shall flourish with immortal energy when the fires of the sun are sunk into cold ashes. God will hear His child, though the child be small. Ah, but we are sinful, and He is holy; will He suffer us to come near Him? Verily, God is willing that the sinful, being penitent, should draw near to Him. Why, has He not drawn near to them in every inviting word and gracious deed of prophet and saint? Has He not drawn near to them in Christ Jesus? Yea, does He not draw near to us sinful now? What is that loathing of sin which sometimes comes upon the sinner? What is that sense of shame and feeling of disgust which sometimes fills him? What is that longing for good, that wistful looking back to the days when the heart was pure? What are these but God coming to the sinner? What are our hungerings for righteousness, our longings for truth, our aspirations for goodness, but God in us, working in us to will and to do of His good pleasure? To meet, then, such operations is to fulfil His own desires; to reward such feelings is to satisfy Himself. If God has come thus to us, how can we doubt that He will reward us coming to Him? How can He deny our prayer, when to fulfil it is to fulfil His own will? (A. Goodrich, D. D.)

The existence of God

1. First, the belief in His existence is universal, and what is a universal belief has the force of a law of nature. This belief we see alike in the savage and the highly civilised. The soul has it sunk into itself that it is an uncompounded spiritual substance. But this impersonalness in the soul implies a personalness in Him who made it.

2. Our moral nature attests the same thing. Conscience in every man says: Thou shalt and thou shalt not. We are conscious of responsibility, and this implies a personal being to whom we are responsible. This is the testimony of the moral nature. Besides, there is an instinct of the infinite in every mind. This, indeed, is the highest part of our nature. Unless there is an answering reality in God, that part is an enigma--eyes without light, lungs without air.

3. We see, thirdly, a progress in history. It is absurd to suppose that all the tangled elements of early European history--Greek, Phoenician, Roman, Scythian--of themselves made Europes present civilisation, as to suppose that a combat of Arctic and Tropic winds could have made the Yale College of now.

4. We see, fourthly, the Scriptures coming to assert a God, not proving Him, but bringing Him to light; affording an explanation of all things in Him, and it is in a sense a proof.

5. We have, fifthly, evidence that God is of the highest purity and holiness. We must have that answering fact in Him, for it is in us. This leads us to ask how we may find Him? Discern Him? It is the greatest of questions, for all of our highest living depends on it.

(1) We cannot find Him by the senses. We cannot see gravitation steady the mountains; we cannot hear light drop on the world, with its vivifying power. We can see the jewel, but not the crystallising power. Life shows itself in the flushing cheek, the beaming eye, the bounding step, but we cannot see it. We could not see it go if it should fly away from our dearest one. It eludes us, and so does God.

(2) We cannot find Him by physical analysis. In Shakespeares brain, the knife finds no Othello; in Raphaels, no mother and child; in Angelos, no high poised dome; in Napoleons, no moving armies, as if they were but fingers. That scientists cannot find God thus must grieve them, till they can pull out genius with a pair of forceps, or showy character and probe.

(3) We cannot find Him by metaphysical analysis. We are to find Him rather through our highest part; through that in us which accords with Him. Love finds love. The pure in heart shall see God. We see now why scientists do not find God. They do not use the right instruments. We cannot find love with a microscope, nor sweep up music with a broom. We see why the failures of scientists to find God do not discourage believers. It matters not to him who has seen them that a man pronounce Naples a dream of the fancy; Venice, that dream in stone, reposing ever in blessed stillness on its lagoons, a myth; Merit Blanc, as seen from Geneva, gleaming like the very throne of God on earth, a speculation. We see what a magnificent democracy God has set up on earth to come to this sublimest knowledge in the universe. No university lore, and no grand diploma are essentials. The poorest, the humblest, may have it. We see the sphere of the Church. The objective point is to bring to the world the capability of so seeing God, and then by all good ordinances and methods to develop this seeing of Him and growth toward Him. (R. S. Storrs, D. D.)

On coming to God

I. IT IS THE NATURE OF FAITH TO MAKE A MAN COME TOWARDS GOD, AND TO GET COMMUNION WITH HIM THROUGH CHRIST.

1. What it is to come to God. Coming to God notes three things, for it is a duty always in progress.

(1) The first address of faith. To come to God is to desire to be in His favour and covenant--to be partakers of His blessings in this life, and of salvation in the life to come (Heb_7:25).

(2) Our constant communion with Him in holy duties. In all exercises of religion we renew our access to Christ, and by Christ to God; in hearing, as a teacher; in prayer, as an advocate for necessary help and supply; in the Lords Supper, as the Master of the feast (Pro_9:2).

(3) Our entrance into glory (Mat_25:34).

2. There is no coming to God but by Christ (Joh_10:9), I am the door; there is no entrance but through Him (Joh_14:6).

(1) By His merit. As paradise was kept by a flaming sword, so all access to God is closed by His justice; there was no pressing in till Christ opened the way, God became man, drawing near to us by the veil of His flesh Heb_10:19-20).

(2) By His grace.

II. THAT THE FIRST POINT OF FAITH, IF WE WOULD HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH GOD, IS TO RELIEVE THAT THERE IS A GOD. This is the primitive and supreme truth, therefore let me discuss it a little; the argument is not needless.

1. Partly because the most universal and incurable disease of the world is atheism; it is disguised under several shapes, but it lies at the root, and destroys all practice and good conscience.

2. Because supreme truths should he laid up with the greatest certainty and assurance. Christians are mistaken very much, if they think all the difficulty of religion lies in affiance, and taking out their own comfort, and in clearing up their own particular interest. Oh, no; a great deal of it lies in assent; there is a privy atheism at the root, and therefore doth the work of God go on so untowardly with us--therefore have we such doubtings and so many deformities of life and conversation.

3. I would handle this argument, that there is a God, because it is good to detain the heart a little in the view of this truth, and to revive it in our souls.

(1) That there is a God may be proved by conscience, which is as a thousand witnesses.

(2) As conscience shows it, so the consent of all nations. There are none so barbarous, but they worship some God.

(3) It may be evident also by the book of the creatures. Surely there is a God, because these things are made in such exactness and order.

(4) Providence also discovers a God. (T. Manton, D. D.)

How to seek God

1. Only: Aut Caesar, aut nullus--Him only shalt thou serve. We must not with Ahaziah seek to Beelzebub, the god of Ekron: but to Jehovah, the God of Israel.

2. We must seek Him diligently, as Saul did his fathers asses, the woman her lost groat: there must be no stone unrolled, as the Ninevites, who cried with all their might.

3. At all times. In health, in wealth, in honour (Hos_5:1-15.). In their affliction they will seek Me diligently: in health as well as in sickness. We will seek to a man so long as we need him: we need God at all times, therefore at all times let us seek unto Him.

4. In time, not as the five foolish virgins, who sought too late, and could have no admittance into the marriage feast. (W. Jones, D. D.)

Believe that He is

Faith in God:

The apostle commences this chapter by defining the nature of faith; and then proceeds to adduce, from the narratives of the Old Testament, a variety of instances wherein this grace had been prominently exhibited. But he pauses in his enumeration, that he may indicate, in the words of the text, that, apart from the possession of this qualification, it can be to no purpose that men use the language of prayer. And yet, when immediately afterwards he comes to explain what the measure of that faith is, without which we cannot acceptably betake ourselves to the footstool of our Maker; it seems certainly, at first sight, as though exceedingly small demands were made upon us in this direction. The first requisite, in coming to God, is stated to be, that we are to believe that He is. Now, might it not have been supposed that the specifying of such a condition as this would have been altogether superfluous? You will notice, however, that the thing demanded was not that there should be belief in the existence of some Supreme Intelligence, who presides over the affairs and movements of the universe; but that the Deity Himself was to be the object of faith. Now, you cannot believe that God is, without bringing your conceptions of His character into accordance with the delineations of it given in the Inspired Volume. And, when this is borne in mind, can it be affirmed with certainty that Christians, in the present day, stand in need of no caution in relation to this very point? One man, for instance, lets his mind be wholly occupied with impressions Of the love of God. He cannot think that the Being who has stored the universe with such abundant demonstrations of His benevolence, will eventually, on the score of transgressions unrepented of, consign any to the abode of the fire and of the worm. Now, is it not evident that the man fails to recognise the Deity of the Scriptures, in the Being concerning whose future proceedings he thus conjectures?--and that, so long as he confines himself to this one-sided view he cannot come to God, since he that cometh to God must believe that He is,--must recognise Him in all the comprehensiveness of His revealed character,--must beware of the substitution of an idol of the fancy, for the Lord of heaven and earth. But another man is thoroughly persuaded that he is walking along the road which will conduct him to eternal life: and this, simply, because he bears a fair character for morality, and is not chargeable with any flagrant crime. He may devote little or no attention to those religious exercises, public and private, which can with safety be neglected by none; but still it seems not to occur to him that he is endangering the interests of his soul. Now, remembering that they that worship God, must worship Him in spirit and in truth; and that there is none other name given among men, whereby we can be saved, but the name of Jesus; you will perceive that the individual who unhappily abandons himself to spiritual indifference, must be necessarily, meanwhile, far from the kingdom of heaven. And if he believes not, therefore, in the God of the Bible, in what terms shall we address him, and what course shall we mark out for his guidance? Oh! the man must indeed be directed to come to God; but nothing beyond what is essential will be uttered, when, at the same time, he is informed that before he can come to God, he must believe that God is. And how frequently is it the case, that the most solemn words of prayer are repeated by the lips, and yet quite unfelt by the heart! Now, is it not so manifest as scarcely to require to be dwelt upon, that if God have connected a large amount of efficacy with earnest prayer, then they who, notwithstanding the proclamation, persist in disbelieving, either wholly or in part, the fact, do not recognise, in the object of their nominal adoration, the prayer-hearing Lord of all power and might; that imagination has created an unfaithful representation of Him; that thus the Divine reality is kept out of view; and that, accordingly, before they can come to God, they must, in the first place, believe that He is. Such, as you will perceive, is the doctrine of our text; wherein the apostle, who had, in the preceding verses, given two instances of the happy results of faith, remarks parenthetically, ere continuing his list, that, if destitute of this gift, man cannot possibly find acceptance; since, in order to his doing so, he must recognise the Deity--recognise Him, of course, as described in His holy Word; and must thus approach Him as a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. (H. B. Moffat, M. A.)

Two things presupposed in coming to God:

He that cometh to God--and that is religion; he that is perpetually approaching God, as aworshipper, as an applicant, as one who would live with Him and walk with Him, and that continually; must believe--must (the phrase is) have believed, first of all and once for all--that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. There are two parts, then, in this primary, this preliminary belief. First the existence of God. A man cannot come to a phantom, to an idea, to a non-entity. It is self-evident. The very phrase here used for religion implies the reality of the Object. He that cometh to God--and that is religion--must know and feel that he comes to some one. He that would walk with God--and that is religion--must know and feel that that desired Companion exists. The other part of the belief is less obvious, but no less instructive. It is the certainty of blessing for the seeker. That He is a rewarder, a recompenser, to them that diligently seek Him. It is no humility, it is an irreverence, to doubt Gods will to bless. It is one thing to be conscious of a want of diligence in seeking--it is another thing, altogether, to mistrust the willingness of God to be found. To suppose Him reluctant to bless, is to paint Him in a repulsive form; is to make Him less gracious, less merciful, less bountiful, than any very ungracious, unmerciful, ungenerous, and churlish man; is to deny to Him one of those attributes which make Him God. (Dean Vaughan.)

Faith in God

What an odd conceit was that of the Cretians, to paint their Jupiter without either eyes or ears I And what an uncertainty was she at that prayed, O God, whoever thou art, for whether thou art, or who thou art I know not (Medea). This uncertainty attending idolatry caused the heathens to close up their petitions with that general Hear, all ye gods and goddesses! And those mariners (Jon_1:5), every man to call upon his god; and lest they might all mistake the true God, they awaken Jonah to call upon his God. (J. Trapp.)

Faith in Gods personality

A certain famous German, at a certain stage of his spiritual life, though he was at the time a critical writer on the side of Christianity, said to one of us, Oh that I could say Thou to my God, as you do! (C. Stanford, D. D.)

Faith and prayer

Prayer is the voice of faith. (J. Home.)

Belief in God and prayer

It is worthy of note that the very day after M. Renan wrote that the God of Victor Hugo was a God to whom it may be useless to pray, Victor Hugo himself, with one stroke of his pen, from the shadow of the grave, overturned this laboured and subtle rhetoric. I ask, he wrote, for prayers from all souls. I believe in God.

God and atheism

Gods character, as portrayed in the Bible, is the most beautiful and perfect conceivable. He is there represented as at once righteous and merciful, a just God and a Saviour. I admire this character as one worthy of the Creator of the world; so much so, that if, when in another state I were assured that the God of the Bible was nowhere to be found, I should ask, with amazement, Who, then, is God? If, instead, there were pointed out to me any other, such as Heathen, Mohammedan, or Papist gods, I should not find it possible, in my nature, to render the homage required, even at the peril of my life. The atheist is so foolish and blind, that he can no more than a mole discern the eternal power and Godhead in the wonderful structure of his own frame, in the curious formation of leaf and flower, or in the marvellous glory of all created things; therefore he comes to the conclusion that there is no God. So may the mole, who has never seen them, make sure there is neither king nor palace. Thou atheistic mole, who hast never travelled nor inquired enough to decide there is no God, all thou canst say is, that thou hast not yet seen Him, and hast no desire to see. How knowest thou that His existence is not so manifest beyond the river of death, and throughout the whole realm of eternity, that denial or even doubt is impossible. The mole may, of course, maintain that there is no Grand Lama in Thibet, because he has never been so far in his travels; but his testimony would have no sort of value. So the atheistic worm must have been through all the regions of death, misery and destruction, and explored all the realms of happiness through the Heaven of heavens, embracing in the circuit of his travels the whole of time and eternity, and able also to comprehend all the modes and forms in which it is possible for Deity to exist, before he can successfully deny the existence of a God. (Christmas Evans.)

Believing prayer:

Is it not a sad thing that we should think it wonderful for God to hear prayer? Much better faith was that of a little boy in one of the schools in Edinburgh, who had attended a prayer-meeting, and at last said to his teacher who conducted it, Teacher, I wish my sister could be got to read the Bible; she never reads it. Why, Johnny, should your sister read the Bible? Because if she should once read it, I am sure it would do her good, and she would be converted and be saved. Do you think so, Johnny? Yes,! do, sir, and I wish the next time theres a prayer-meeting, you would ask the people to pray for my sister that she may begin to read the Bible. Well, well, it shall be done, John. So the teacher gave out that a little boy was very anxious that prayer should be offered that his sister might begin to read the Bible. John was observed to get up and go out. The teacher thought it very rude of the boy to disturb the people in a crowded room, and so the next day when the lad came, he said, John, I thought it was very rude of you to get up in the prayer-meeting and go out. You ought not to have done so. Oh, sir, said the boy, I did not mean to be rude; but I thought I should just like to go home and see my sister reading her Bible for the first time. Thus we ought to believe, and watch with expectation for answers to our prayer. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Faith in prayer:

Prayer is the bow, the promise is the arrow: faith is the hand which draws the bow, and sends the hearts message to heaven. The bow without the arrow is of no use; and the arrow without the bow is of little worth; and both, without the strength of the hand, to no purpose. Neither the promise without prayer, nor prayer without the promise, nor both without faith, avail the Christian anything. What was said of the Israelites, They could not enter in, because of unbelief; the same may be said of many of our prayers: they cannot enter heaven, because they are not put up in faith. (H. G. Salter.)

God answers prayer:

Canon Wilberforce, referring to the struggle preceding the abolition of the slave trade, said he was in a position to state that the leaders in that great movement never took a single step in it without earnest and constant communion with their Lord. On the very night when the leader went down to the House of Commons to plead with silver voice and tender eloquence for the abolition of the evil, on that very night in a little chamber there was gathered a band of praying men; and that night was the night of victory in the House of Commons. (Proctors Gems.)

Confidence in prayer

A negro slave in Virginia, whose name we will call Jack, was remarkable for his good sense, knowledge of the leading truths of the gospel, and especially for his freedom from all gloomy fears in regard to his future eternal happiness. A professing Christian, a white man, who was of a very different temperament, once said to him, Jack, you seem to be always comfortable in the hope of the gospel. I wish you would tell me how you manage to keep steadily in this blessed frame of mind. Why, massa, replied Jack, I just fall fiat on the promise, and I pray right up. We recommend Jacks method to all desponding Christians, as containing, in substance, all that can be properly said on the subject. Take ground on the promises of God, and plead them in the prayer of faith--pray right up. (K. Arvine.)

A Rewarder

God a rewarder:

This God taketh upon Him.

1. That every one might have a reward. No creature can be too great to be rewarded of Him, and the greatest needs His reward. On the other side,

God is so gracious, as He accounteth none too mean to be rewarded of 1Sa_2:8; Luk_16:21-22).

2. That believers might be sure of their reward. For God is faithful Heb_10:23; Eph_6:8).

3. That the reward might be worth the having. For God in His rewards con-sidereth what is meet for His Excellency to give, and accordingly proportions His reward. (W. Gouge.)

Rewards in religion

The Christian religion holds out rewards to encourage our obedience. Now how far should rewards and punishments be motives of action? The man of reason immediately informs us, that goodness derived from such motives is no goodness at all--that it is merely the desire of happiness, and the fear of misery. He will add perhaps, as the devil said formerly with regard to Job, that the Christian does not serve God for nought: but that proper rewards are judiciously set before him, to keep his disinterested virtue from swerving. Had the rewards, which the Christian religion places before its worshippers, been such as the Arabian impostor promised--sensual pleasure in all its full-bloom delights--the objection might have weight. The expectation of such rewards iscalculated certainly to debase the mind. But if the reward be holy, the expectation of it, or, if you please, the making it a motive of action, must be virtuous likewise. Now it is the excellence of the object that elevates the pursuit. We put youth on the acquirement of learning, and have no conception that the attainment of knowledge, which is the reward annexed, can debase his mind. It has a contrary effect. In the same manner, with regard to the rewards of another world, the very pursuit of them is health to the soul; as the attainment of them is its perfection. They are pursued through the exercise of these great principles of faith and trust in God. These virtues, which have nothing earthly about them, tend to purify the mind in a high degree. They abstract it from earthly things, and fix it on heavenly. It might also be shown that the fear of future punishment is a just motive of action. To the wicked, indeed, it is the natural dread of those consequences which attend guilt; and serves merely to rouse them to a sense of their wickedness. But when it acts upon a well-disposed mind, it consists in the fear of displeasing God. A just, rational, and religious motive of action. (W. Cilpin, M. A.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Hebrews

SEEKING GOD

Heb 11:6

THE writer has been pointing to the patriarch Enoch as the second of these examples of the power of faith in the Old Covenant; and it occurs to him that there is nothing said in Genesis about Enoch’s faith, so he set about showing that he must have had faith, because he ‘walked with God,’ and pleased Him, and no man could thus walk with God, and please Him, unless he had come to Him, and no man could come to a God in whom he did not believe, and whom he did not believe to be waiting to help and bless him, when he did come. So the facts of Enoch’s life show that there must have been in him an underlying faith. That is all that I need to say about the context of the words before us. I am not going to speak of the writer’s argument, but only of this one aspect of the divine character which is brought out here. ‘He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.’

I. Now a word about the seeking.

Seek?’ Do we need to seek? Not in the way in which people go in quest of a thing that they have lost and do not know where to find. We do not need to search; we do not need to seek.

The beginning of all our seeking is that God has sought us in Jesus Christ, and so we have done for ever with: ‘Oh! that I knew where I might find Him.’ We have done for ever with ‘feeling after Him, if haply we might find Him.’ That is all past. We have to seek, but let us never forget that we must have been found of Him, before we seek Him. That is to say, He must have revealed Himself to us in the fulness and reality and solid certainty of His existence and character, before there can be kindled in any heart or mind the desire to possess Him. He must have flashed His light upon the eye before the eye beholds; and He must have stimulated the desire by the revelation of Himself which comes before all desires, ere any of us will stir ourselves up to lay hold upon God. Ours, then, is not to be a doubtful search, hut a certain seeking, that goes straight to the place whore it knows that its treasure is, just as a migratory bird will set out from the foggy and ice-bound shores of the north, and go straight through the mists and the night, over continents and oceans, to a place where it never was before, but to which it is led - God only knows how - by some deep instinct, too deep to be an error, and too persistent not to find its resting-place. That is how we are to seek. We are to seek as the flower turns its opening petals to the sunshine, making no mistake as to the quarter of the heaven in which the radiance is lodged. We have to seek, as the rootlet goes straight to the river, knowing where the water is, from which life and sap will come. Thus we have to seek where and what we know. Our quest is no doubtful and miserable hunting about for a possible good, but an earnest desire for a certain and a solid blessing. That is the seeking.

Let us put it into two or three plain words. The prime requisite of the Christian’s seeking after God is as the writer here says, faith, I need not dwell upon that. ‘Must believe that He is’ - yes; of course. We do not seek after negations or hypotheses; we seek after a living Being. ‘And that He is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him’ - yes; if we were not cure that we should find what we wanted, we should never go to look for it. But, beyond all that, let me put three things as included in, and necessary to, the Christian seeking - desire, effort, prayer. We seek what we desire. But too many of us do not wish God, and would not know what to do with Him if we had Him, and would be very much embarrassed if it were possible for the full blessings which come along with Him, to be entrusted to our slack hands and unloving .hearts. Brethren, we call ourselves Christians; let us be honest with ourselves, and rigid in the investigation of the thoughts of our own hearts. Is there a wish for God there? Is there an aching void in His absence, or do we shovel cartloads of earthly rubbish into our hearts, and thus dull desires that can be satisfied only with Him? These are not questions to which any one has a right to expect an answer from another; they are not questions that any Christian man can safely shirk answering to himself and to God. The measure of our seeking is actually settled by the measure of our desire.

Then effort, of course, follows desire as surely as the shadow comes after the substance, because the only purpose of our desires, in the constitution of our nature, is to supply the driving power for effort. They are the steam in the boiler intended to whirl round the wheels. And so for a man to desire a thing that he can do nothing whatever to bring about, is misery and folly. But for a man to desire, and not to. work towards fulfilling his desire, is greater misery and greater stupidity. One cannot believe in the genuineness of those devout aspirations that one hears in people’s prayers, who get up and wipe the dust off their knees, and go out into the world, and do nothing to bring about the fulfilment of their prayers. There is a great deal of that sort of desire amongst professing Christians in all churches, conventional utterances which are backed up and verified by no corresponding conduct. If we are seeking after God, we shall not let all the seeking effervesce in pious aspirations; it will get consolidated into corresponding action, and operate to keep thought and love directed towards Him, even amidst the trivialities, and legitimate duties, and great things of life. There will be effort to bring Him into connection with all our work; effort to keep by Him as we go about our daily tasks, if we are truly seeking after God.

And then, desire and effort being pre-supposed, there will come honest prayers, genuine prayers. ‘Seek ye the Lord while He may be found,’ says the prophet, and immediately goes on to exhort us to ‘call upon Him while He is near,’ as one and the chief way of seeking Him. He is always near, closer to us than friends and lovers, closer to us than our eyes and hands, near in His Son and the Spirit, near to hear and to bless, near and desiring to be nearer, yea to be blended with our being and to dwell in us and we in Him. We have not only to desire His gift, and to work towards it, but to ask for it. Then, if we exercise these three activities of desire, effort, petition, we may truly say: ‘When Thou saidst, "Seek ye My face," my heart said unto Thee, "Thy face, Lord! will I seek,"‘ and may go on, as the psalmist did, to offer the consequent prayer: ‘Hide not Thy face from me,’ in full assurance that He is found by every seeking soul So much for the seeking.

II. Now a word about the diligence in seeking.

The writer uses a very strong expression, one word in the original, which is here adequately rendered, ‘them that diligently seek Him.’ Half-hearted seeking finds nothing. You sometimes say to your children, when you have set them to look for anything, and they come back and say they have not been able to find it, ‘You do not know how to seek.’ And that is true about a great many of us. Half and half desire, so that one eye is turned on earth, and the other lifted up now and then to heaven, does not bring us much. It will bring a little, but not the fulness of blessing which follows on whole- hearted, continuous, persevering seeking. If you hold a cup below a tap, in an unsteady hand, sometimes it is under the whole rush of the water, and sometimes is on one side, and it will be a long time before you get it filled. There will be much of the water spilled. God pours Himself upon us, and we hold our vessels with unsteady hands, and twitch them away sometimes, and the bright blessing falls on the ground and cannot be gathered up, and our cup is empty, and our lips parched. Interrupted seeking will find little; perfunctory seeking will find less. Conventional religion brings very little blessing, very little consciousness of the presence of God; and that is why so many who call themselves Christians, and are so, in a measure and in a sense, know so little of the joy of being found of God. They have sought but not sought diligently.

Now let us take the rebuke to ourselves, if we need it, and we all need it more or less. It is a very threadbare piece of Christian counsel, to be earnest in our seeking after God, but it is none the less needed because it is threadbare, and it would not be threadbare if it had not been so much needed. ‘They that search diligently’ - which is the real meaning of the words in the Book of Proverbs rendered, ‘they that seek Me early’ -’shall find Me.’

III. So this brings me to the last thing here, the Rewarder and the reward.

‘He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.’ The best reward of seeking is to find the thing that you are looking for. So the best reward that God, the Rewarder, gives is when He gives Himself. There are a great many other good things that come to the diligently seeking Christian soul, but the best thing is that God draws near. Enoch sought God, came to God, and so he walked with God. The reward of his coming was continuous, calm communion, which gave him a companion in solitude, and one to walk at his side all through the darkness and the roughnesses, as well as the joys and the smoothnesses, of daily life.

Ah, brethren! there is no reward comparable to the felt presence in our own quiet hearts of the God who has found us, and whom we have found. And if we have that, then He becomes, here and now, the reward of the diligent search, and the reward of it to, day carries in itself the assurance of the perfect reward of the coming time. ‘He walked with God, and... God took him.’ That will be true of all of us. There is only one seeking in life that is sure to result in the finding of what we seek. All other search - the quest after the chief good - if it runs in any other direction, is resultless and barren. But there is one course, and one only, in which the result is solid and certain. ‘I have never said to any of the seed of Jacob, seek ye My face in vain.’ If we seek He will be found of us, and so be our Rewarder and our reward.

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

11:6 it is impossible to please God without faith: The author alludes to 10:38, which quotes Hab 2:4. • Faith must include believing that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him. In life’s difficulties, readers are challenged to trust in God and to anticipate the fulfillment of his promises.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Heb 11:6. Χωρὶς, without) He proves by the event the faith of Enoch.—εὐαρεστῆσαι) to please, to show one’s self pleasing to. The parallel presently occurs, προσέρχεσθαι τῷ Θεῷ, to come to GOD, to walk with God. Therefore the apostle, with skilful design, joins the Hebrew and Greek text.—πιστεῦσαι, believe) Enoch had been favoured with no divine appearance, as we may gather from this passage; so neither had Moses before he left Egypt, Heb 11:27. The position (thesis), that he is, etc., was strongly felt by Enoch, and is asserted from the faith of Enoch. The faith of Enoch, which is described in a manner so singular, seems to have had not very many perspicuous Data. Otherwise his faith would not be, as it is, reduced in Paul’s description exclusively to this point.—δεῖ, must) The inference which is found in this passage, is intended to be necessary and strong.—τῷ Θεῷ, to GOD) inasmuch as He is invisible, Heb 11:27.—ὅτι ἐστὶ) that He is. Hence ὁ ΩΝ is used absolutely, Wis 13:1; comp. πραγμάτων, of things, note, Heb 11:1. He who walks with God, acknowledges Him to be God. This is opposed to antediluvian atheism.—καὶ) This word also depends on ὅτι.—τοῖς) of them, not of others.—ἐκζητοῦσιν, who earnestly seek) without seeing Him. A grand compound [seek out].—μισθαποδότης, rewarder) for example, of Enoch, whom He translated.—γίνεται, that He will be) The future bestowing of the reward is intended. The reward is He himself, who is earnestly sought [sought out]. WITH GOD, says Moses, and signifies thereby communion (with God: “Enoch walked with God).”

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

This reward is not referred to our merits, but to the free promise, as Paul teacheth in Abraham the father of all the faithful, Rom. 4:4.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

without--Greek, "apart from faith": if one be destitute of faith (compare Rom 14:23).

to please--Translate, as ALFORD does, the Greek aorist, "It is impossible to please God at all" (Rom 8:8). Natural amiabilities and "works done before the grace of Christ are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ; yea, rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin" [Article XIII, Book of Common Prayer]. Works not rooted in God are splendid sins [AUGUSTINE].

he that cometh to God--as a worshipper (Heb 7:19).

must believe--once for all: Greek aorist tense.

that God is--is the true self-existing Jehovah (as contrasted with all so-called gods, not gods, Gal 4:8), the source of all being, though he sees Him not (Heb 11:1) as being "invisible" (Heb 11:27). So Enoch; this passage implies that he had not been favored with visible appearances of God, yet he believed in God's being, and in God's moral government, as the Rewarder of His diligent worshippers, in opposition to antediluvian skepticism. Also Moses was not so favored before he left Egypt the first time (Heb 11:27); still he believed.

and . . . is--a different Greek verb from the former "is." Translate, "is eventually"; proves to be; literally, "becomes."

rewarder--renderer of reward [ALFORD]. So God proved to be to Enoch. The reward is God Himself diligently "sought" and "walked with" in partial communion here, and to be fully enjoyed hereafter. Compare Gen 15:1, "I am thy exceeding great reward."

of them--and them only.

diligently seek--Greek, "seek out" God. Compare "seek early," Pro 8:17. Not only "ask" and "seek," but "knock," Mat 7:7; compare Heb 11:12; Luk 13:24, "Strive" as in an agony of contest.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 6. He that cometh to God] The man who professes that it is his duty to worship God, must, if he act rationally, do it on the conviction that there is such a Being infinite, eternal, unoriginated, and self-existent; the cause of all other being; on whom all being depends; and by whose energy, bounty, and providence, all other beings exist, live, and are supplied with the means of continued existence and life. He must believe, also, that he rewards them that diligently seek him; that he is not indifferent about his own worship; that he requires adoration and religious service from men; and that he blesses, and especially protects and saves, those who in simplicity and uprightness of heart seek and serve him. This requires faith, such a faith as is mentioned above; a faith by which we can please God; and now that we have an abundant revelation, a faith according to that revelation; a faith in God through Christ the great sin-offering, without which a man can no more please him, or be accepted of him, than Cain was. As the knowledge of the being of God is of infinite importance in religion, I shall introduce at the end of this chapter a series of propositions, tending to prove the being of God, 1st, a priori; and 2dly, a posteriori; omitting the proofs that are generally produced on those points, for which my readers may refer to works in general circulation on this subject: and 3dly, I shall lay down some phenomena relative to the heavenly bodies, which it will be difficult to account for without acknowledging the infinite skill, power, and continual energy of God.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

6. But without faith, etc. What is said here belongs to all the examples which the Apostle records in this chapter; but as there is in the passage some measure of obscurity, it is necessary to examine its meaning more closely.

But there is no better interpreter than the Apostle himself. The proof, then, which he immediately subjoins, may serve as an explanation. The reason he assigns why no one can please God without faith, is this, — because no one will ever come to God, except he believes that God is, and is also convinced that he is a remunerator to all who seek him. If access then to God is not opened, but by faith, it follows, that all who are without it, are the objects of God’s displeasure. Hence the Apostle shows how faith obtains favor for us, even because faith is our teacher as to the true worship of God, and makes us certain as to his goodwill, so that we may not think that we seek him in vain. These two clauses ought not to be slightly passed over, — that we must believe that God is, and that we ought to feel assured that he is not sought in vain.

It does not indeed seem a great matter, when the Apostle requires us to believe that God is; but when you more closely consider it, you will find that there is here a rich, profound, and sublime truth; for though almost all admit without disputing that God is, yet it is evident, that except the Lord retains us in the true and certain knowledge of himself, various doubts will ever creep in, and obliterate every thought of a Divine Being. To this vanity the disposition of man is no doubt prone, so that to forget God becomes an easy thing. At the same time the Apostle does not mean, that men ought to feel assured that there is some God, for he speaks only of the true God; nay, it will not be sufficient for you to form a notion of any God you please; but you must understand what sort of Being the true God is; for what will it profit us to devise and form an idol, and to ascribe to it the glory due to God?

We now then perceive what the Apostle means in the first clause; he denies that we can have an access to God, except we have the truth, that God is deeply fixed in our hearts, so as not to be led here and there by various opinions.

It is hence evident, that men in vain weary themselves in serving God, except they observe the right way, and that all religions are not only vain, but also pernicious, with which the true and certain knowledge of God is not connected; for all are prohibited from having any access to God, who do not distinguish and separate him from all idols; in short, there is no religion except where this truth reigns dominant. But if the true knowledge of God has its seat in our hearts it will not fail to lead us to honor and fear him; for God, without his majesty is not really known. Hence arises the desire to serve him, hence it comes that the whole life is so formed, that he is regarded as the end in all things

The second clause is that we ought to be fully persuaded that God is not sought in vain; and this persuasion includes the hope of salvation and eternal life, for no one will be in a suitable state of heart to seek God except a sense of the divine goodness be deeply felt, so as to look for salvation from him. We indeed flee from God, or wholly disregard him, when there is no hope of salvation. But let us bear in mind, that this is what must be really believed, and not held merely as a matter of opinions; for even the ungodly may sometimes entertain such a notion, and yet they do not come to God; and for this reason, because they have not a firm and fixed faith. This then is the other part of faith by which we obtain favor with God, even when we feel assured that salvation is laid up for us in him.

But many shamefully pervert this clause; for they hence elicit the merits of works, and the conceit about deserving. And they reason thus: “We please God by faith, because we believe him to be a rewarder; then faith has respect to the merits of works.” This error cannot be better exposed, than by considering how God is to be sought; while any one is wandering from the right way of seeking him, he cannot be said to be engaged in the work. Now Scripture assigns this as the right way, — that a man, prostrate in himself, and smitten with the conviction that he deserves eternal death, and in self-despair, is to flee to Christ as the only asylum for salvation. Nowhere certainly can we find that we are to bring to God any merits of works to put us in a state of favor with him. Then he who understands that this is the only right way of seeking God, will be freed from every difficulty on the subject; for reward refers not to the worthiness or value of works but to faith.

Thus, these frigid glosses of the Sophists, such as, “by faith we please God, for we deserve when we intend to please,” fall wholly to the ground. The Apostle’s object was to carry us much higher, even that conscience might feel assured that it is not a vain thing to seek God; and this certainty or assurance far exceeds what we can of ourselves attain, especially when any one considers his own self. For it is not to be laid down as an abstract principle, that God is a rewarder to those who seek him; but every one of us ought individually to apply this doctrine to himself, so that we may know that we are regarded by God, that he has such a care for our salvation as never to be wanting to us, that our prayers are heard by him, that he will be to us a perpetual deliverer. But as none of these things come to us except through Christ, our faith must ever regard him and cleave to him alone.

From these two clauses, we may learn how, and why it is impossible for man to please God without faith; God justly regards us all as objects of his displeasure, as we are all by nature under his curse; and we have no remedy in our own power. It is hence necessary that God should anticipate us by his grace; and hence it comes, that we are brought to know that God is, and in such a way that no corrupt superstition can seduce us, and also that we become assured of a certain salvation from him.

Were any one to desire a fuller view of this subject, he should make his commencement here, — that we in vain attempt to try anything, except we look to God; for the only true end of life is to promote his glory; but this can never be done, unless there be first the true knowledge of him. Yet this is still but the half of faith, and will profit us but little, except confidence be added. Hence faith will only then be complete and secure us God’s favor, when we shall feel a confidence that we shall not seek him in vain, and thus entertain the certainty of obtaining salvation from him. But no one, except he be blinded by presumption, and fascinated by self-love, can feel assured that God will be a rewarder of his merits. Hence this confidence of which we speak recumbs not on works, nor on man’s own worthiness, but on the grace of God alone; and as grace is nowhere found but in Christ, it is on him alone that faith ought to be fixed.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(6) But without faith.—Better, and apart from faith it is impossible to be “well pleasing” (unto Him); for he that draweth near (Heb_7:25; Heb_10:1; Heb_10:22) to God must believe . . . Thus the very statement that Enoch pleased God is an assertion that in him faith was found. No one can be the habitual worshipper of God (this is what the phrase implies) if his faith does not grasp these two truths. “Is a rewarder”—literally, becometh a recompenser (Heb_2:2; Heb_10:35); the future recompense is present to the eye of faith.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

6. that he is …] The object of Faith is both the existence and the Divine government of God. “We trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe” (1Ti_4:10).

and that he is a rewarder] Rather, “and that he becomes (i.e. shews or proves Himself to be) a rewarder.”

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

By faith Noah, being warned of God,.... In the Greek text, Noah is called "Noe", and so the Septuagint interpreters of the Old Testament call him; but Josephus calls him "Noeos": or "having received an oracle from God"; in which he was admonished, how to make an ark, as Moses was, in like manner, how to make a tabernacle, Heb 8:5. This oracle or warning is extant, in Gen 6:13 and it was

of things not seen as yet; as the universal deluge; the building of an ark or ship, which was the first that ever was in the world; the entrance of all creatures into it; their preservation in it, and the destruction of all without it: and this divine warning, or oracle, concerning things of such a nature, delivered to Noah, and received by him, shows that he was a favourite of God; that his faith rested in the word of God; and that it agreed with the apostle's definition of faith, Heb 11:1,

moved with fear; not with a fear of his own damnation; nor with a distrust of the salvation of himself and his family in the ark; but with an awful sense of the judgments of God upon the wicked; and with reverence of God, from whom he received the oracle; and with a religious fear, with which he worshipped God, and which he discovered by a regard to his word and ordinances; and which fear does not arise from nature, but from grace; and is increased by the discoveries of divine love; and is consistent with faith, goes along with it, and is a fruit of it: hence he

prepared an ark for the saving of his house. Immediately, and without delay, he set about the building of the ark, and made it exactly according to the pattern which was given him; and his end in it was to secure his family, himself and his wife, his three sons and their wives, from the flood, which he believed would shortly come upon the world, according to the word of God; and in this his faith was seen: and from hence it may be observed, that, though God can save without means, yet, generally speaking, it is his will to save by them; and that as God saved Noah and his family in the waters, so he can, and does, save his people in afflictions; and also, that true faith is attended with obedience:

by the which he condemned the world: the inhabitants of the world, the world of the ungodly: as a preacher, he declared they would be condemned, in case of impenitence and unbelief; and his words heard, and his actions seen by them, were aggravations of their condemnation; for by his works, as well as by his words, he reproved, and condemned them; by building the ark, as he declared his own faith, so he condemned their unbelief; See Gill on Mat 12:41.

and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith: not of the law, but of the righteousness of Christ, and of eternal life through that; for he was not only heir of this world, as Abraham, but of that which is to come; and not through works of righteousness done by him, but through the righteousness of Christ received by faith, or through faith in Christ, the antitype of the ark.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

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.

Ver. 6. But without faith] That is, without Christ, in whom the Father is well pleased, Joh 14:6.

For he that cometh to God] sc. Forma pauperis, that cometh a begging to him in the sense of his own utter indigence, as Jacob’s sons came to Joseph, and as the Egyptians hard bestead came to him, saying, "We will not hide it from my lord, how that our money is spent," &c., Gen 47:18

Must believe that he is] Zaleucus, lawgiver of the Locrians, speaketh thus in the poem to his laws, Hoc inculcatum sit, esse Deos, let this he well settled in men’s minds that there is a Deity, and that this Deity will reward the devout. But what an odd conceit was that of the Cretians, to paint their Jupiter without either eyes or ears! And what an uncertainty was she at that prayed, O Deus quisquis es vel in coelo, vel in terra, O God, whoever thou art, for whether thou art, and who thou art, I know not. (Medea.) This uncertainty attending idolatry caused the heathens to close up their petitions with that general Diique Deaeque omnes, Hear, all ye gods and goddesses. (Servius in Geor. lib. 1.) And those mariners, Jon 1:5, every man to call upon his god; and lest they might all mistake the true God, they awaken Jonah to call upon his God. Christian petitioners must settle this, that their God is Optimus, Maximus, such in himself, and such toward them, as he stands described in his holy word.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

But without faith it is impossible to please him - Without “confidence” in God - in his fidelity, his truth, his wisdom, his promises. And this is as true in other things as in religion. It is impossible for a child to please his father unless he has confidence in him. It is impossible for a wife to please her husband, or a husband a wife, unless they have confidence in each other. If there is distrust and jealousy on either part, there is discord and misery. We cannot be pleased with a professed friend unless he has such confidence in us as to believe our declarations and promises. The same thing is true of God. He cannot be pleased with the man who has no confidence in him; who doubts the truth of his declarations and promises; who does not believe that his ways are right, or that he is qualified for universal empire. The requirement of faith or confidence in God is not arbitrary; it is just what we require of our children, and partners in life, and friends, as the indispensable condition of our being pleased with them.

For he that cometh to God - In any way - as a worshipper. This is alike required in public worship, in the family, and in secret devotion.

Must believe that he is - That God exists. This is the first thing required in worship. Evidently we cannot come to him in an acceptable manner if we doubt his existence. We do not see him, but we must believe that he is; we cannot form in our mind a correct image of God, but this should not prevent a conviction that there is such a Being. But the declaration here implies more than that there should be a general persuasion of the truth that there is a God. It is necessary that we have this belief in lively exercise in the act of drawing near to him, and that we should realize that we are actually in the presence of the all-seeing Jehovah.

And that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him - This is equally necessary as the belief that he exists. If we could not believe that God would hear and answer our prayers, there could be no encouragement to call upon him. It is not meant here that the desire of the reward is to be the motive for seeking God - for the apostle makes no affirmation on that point; but that it is impossible to make an acceptable approach to him unless we have this belief.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

He proves the Henoch [Enoch] was translated by faith, or on account of faith, thus: Henoch was translated because he pleased God; now he could not please God but by faith; therefore by faith he was translated. (Menochius)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

The Spirit here proveth that Enoch pleased God by faith, though it was not expressly written in his text by Moses, because of the impossibility of pleasing God without faith.

But without faith it is impossible to please him; but without faith upon God in Christ, whom Enoch pleased, it is absolutely impossible to do any thing acceptable to God, so as to be justified by him; for infidelity, or want of faith, makes God a liar, 1Jo 5:10, Christ a vanity, Joh 5:40, and God’s will a deceit, which peremptorily saith, there is no pleasing of him but by faith in Christ, Joh 14:6. The effect cannot exist without its cause, as is proved in the next words.

For he that cometh to God: for whoever he be, every particular soul, that cometh off from sin to God, so as to be under his conduct and influence; makes out by spiritual motions of his mind, will, affections, and members, in thoughts, desires, resolutions, and operations, to enjoy God, so as to be accepted with, justified by, and blessed of him; and at present makes his access to him with liberty and boldness in prayer, or any other duty, through Christ.

Must believe that he is; he must really, fully, and supernaturally receive all that which God revealeth in his word is pleasing to him, especially concerning himself; as, that he is the primitive, perfect Being, and the Cause of all; that he is three in relations and one in essence, most excellent in all his attributes, infinitely wise, powerful, just, good, and eternal, &c., the supreme Creator and Governor of, and Lawgiver to, all.

And that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him; and that he will recompense all men according to their works, but will eminently and freely give himself to be the reward of his, and whatever he can be to or do for them for their good, Gen 15:1; but to those only, who with an intent heart and spirit pursue him by faith, love, and longing after him as their supremest good, Isa 45:22; Rom 2:6,12; Rev 22:12.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

6. But—This testimony could not have been given to Enoch without faith.

For—universal reason, alike for Enoch and for us.

Impossible—For without faith on our part there can be no mutual communion with God. In order to “walk with God” a man must have sympathy, love, and faith towards God.

Cometh to God—To worship, as the Israelites came into his presence in the sanctuary. Compare Heb_7:25; Heb_10:1.

He is—An atheist cannot adore God. God’s admitted existence is the first condition of possible worship. And faith in the existence of the true God is necessary to true worship. He may be, indeed, imperfectly apprehended; the conception may be limited and finite. Nevertheless, he must be held by faith to be a supreme Being, who is on the side of truth and righteousness. He is felt to be the personal “power without us,” and above us, “that makes for righteousness.” As such this holy line of witnesses, running adown the pages of sacred history, realized God in their “faith.” And this realization of a holy Supreme it was that distinguishes them from idolaters of all lands and ages, and from atheists. By this faith they aspired to communion with and likeness to a righteous God, and God accepted their faith, however imperfect, “for righteousness.” He granted them his favour, communed with them by his Spirit, revealed himself by a whole series of supernatural manifestations, and prepared their race for the bringing forth of his Son in due time.

A rewarder—They believed that inestimable blessings would descend from the friendship of the Holy God.

Diligently seek him—The expressive Greek verb, εκζητειν, is, seek him out from; that is, from all idolatries, atheisms, and wickednesses. God has his witness in every human heart; yet through that witness must He be sought out.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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. The purpose of this verse, in connection with the conclusion of the last, is to show that the Scripture record does imply faith in Enoch, though there is no mention of it there by name: it is of necessity involved in the phrase, euhrestese tw Yew . The expression in the Hebrew, walked with God" (be it observed), involves it equally; so that the argument is not affected by the quotation being kern the LXX

The impossibility of pleasing God without faith.

But without faith it is impossible to please him," etc. The fact that Enoch walked by faith, and that his life was well pleasing to God, suggested to the writer this general axiom on the indispensableness of faith in order to secure the Divine complacency. Two principal observations will bring before us the chief teaching of our text.

I THE APPROACH OF THE SOUL TO GOD IS ESSENTIAL TO OUR PLEASING HIM. "Without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God," etc. Having asserted that apart from faith man cannot please God, the writer proceeds to show this by affirming that he who comes to God must believe certain truths concerning him, thus clearly implying that we cannot please God without coming to him.

1. Coming to God implies distance from him. The unrenewed soul is far from God by sin. Sin against him generates suspicions concerning him, dread of him, and so banishes the soul far away from him. Like the prodigal son, the sinner wanders away from the gracious Father "into a far country." The expression, "them that seek him," also suggests that the seekers have not the consciousness of his presence and favor; they do not always realize his nearness unto them, or they would not need to seek after him.

2. Coming to God is the approach of the soul unto him. As the implied distance from him is not local but moral, so the coming to him is not physical but spiritual. It is the soul drawing near to him in thought and desire, in affection and devotion. The penitent thus comes to him with confession and prayer for pardon. The poor and needy, with petitions for succor and supply. The thankful, with warm tributes of gratitude and praise. The pious, with lowly loving adoration.

3. This approach of the soul to God is gratifying unto him. That his creatures, created in his image and for fellowship with himself, should stand aloof from him in distrust, or suspicion, or indifference, or by reason of absorption in other things, is painful to him. His fatherly heart yearns for the confidence and love of his children. He welcomes the first approach of the penitent sinner to him, even as the father of the returning prodigal saw him while he was yet afar off, and was moved with compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him." He is pleased when his children regard him with assured confidence and warm affection, and come to hint in their necessities and satisfactions, their sorrows and joys, etc.

II THE EXERCISE OF FAITH IN GOD IS ESSENTIAL TO OUR APPROACH TO HIM. "For he that cometh to God must believe that he is," etc. Ebrard says wisely concerning this faith, Precisely the faith that there is a God, and One who will reward those who seek after him, found place in Enoch, and could find place in him. Far front intending to ascribe to Enoch the New Testament faith, the author defines the faith here in its general form as it applied to the time of Enoch." The faith which is essential to the approach of the soul to him is:

1. Faith is, his Being. "Must believe that he is." And we have the amplest anti firmest ground upon which to base this article of our faith. The Bible says "that he is;" the universe witnesses to the same great truth; and human consciousness confirms the testimony.

2. Faith in his entreatableness. That he is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek him." This implies faith in his accessibility; the belief that we may approach unto him; that our prayers will reach his ear. He hears the sigh of sorrow, the moan of misery, and the whispered aspiration of the pious heart. He is perfectly acquainted with the godly "soul"s sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed." He not only hears prayer, but he also answers it. The teaching of the sacred Scriptures on this point is both full and explicit. (Psa_37:4 Mat_7:7-11 Mat_18:19 Mat_21:22Jo Mat_15:7 Mat_16:23, 24 Jam_1:5, 6 5:16-18 1Jn_5:14, 1Jn_5:15) The testimony of the godly is no less clear and decisive. "He is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek him." This means more than that the exercise of prayer to God in itself exalts and enriches, calms and cleanses the praying soul. The reflex benefits of prayer are undoubtedly very great and precious, but their existence depends upon the belief that God hears and answers prayer. Prayer would lose its reality and become a mere pretence, offensive to all honest souls, if we had not faith in God as "a Rewarder of them that diligently seek him." But the seeker must be diligent; he must be earnest. "Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart." The prayer must be fervent and persevering, or it may fail of its reward. "When prayer mounts upon the wing of fervor to God, then answers come down like lightning from God.

Thus we see that "without faith it is impossible to please God." Our subject shows:

1. The necessity of cultivating and exercising faith in God.

2. The advantages of believing prayer to God. W.J.

Faith needed to please God.

I IT IS, THEN, POSSIBLE TO PLEASE GOD. Some there are who care nothing whether he be pleased or not. God"s will, God"s delight in the obedience of men, never enters into their thoughts. They live to please themselves. They can even understand that some object may be served by trying to please other men. And yet those who live for self-pleasure are sure to be disappointed. God has meant our pleasure to come through first of all pleasing him. The great law of man"s being is that he should serve the purposes of God, and he can only serve those purposes by finding out what they are, and taking God"s means to carry them into effect. If, then, it is God"s will that we should please him, he will surely show us what to do and how to do it. There ought to be in our hearts a desire to please God. We are not without the wish to stand well with our fellow men, to have their good word. How much more, then, we should desire to become acceptable to him who is perfect goodness! If Enoch pleased God, we may do it. And the first thing to be considered is, not whether it be difficult or easy to do it, but whether it be possible.

II How GOD IS TO BE PLEASED. Remember always that, in the writings of apostles and evangelists, when God is spoken of Jehovah is meant. Jehovah as over against the gods of heathendom. Their priests taught that it was possible to please them, and showed how the thing was to be done, by offerings of all sorts, and by adding constantly to the wealth of their shrines. The offerings in themselves were reckoned good; and well they might be, for they made many priests rich. Jehovah also received offerings, but to him the offerings had no value except as expressive of intelligent obedience. The offerings were for the sake of men rather than of God himself. He must be pleased by something different from mere gifts of what he has himself created. And here the writer gives us one of the essentials towards pleasing God. Apart from faith we cannot please him. There are many elements in the character that is pleasing to God, and one element is made prominent at one time, another at another. We know that Enoch must surely have been a loving man, for without love it is impossible to please God. Here the important thing was to insist on his being a believer. Idols could be approached without faith, for they were really not approached at all; no heart of man ever came into living contact with them. But of God there was no image; the worshipper had to believe that there was a real existence all unseen. Suppose for a moment that we had set before us for search and discovery an object perceptible by the senses. Before beginning the search, should we not be wise in assuring ourselves on the following points?

1. The real existence of the object.

2. The probability of finding it.

3. A corresponding reward for the possible toil of the search.

There has been faith on these points which has had no rational basis, and of course has ended in disappointment; e.g. the enthusiastic searching for the philosopher"s stone. But here is an object, the object supreme of all God, the Fountain of being and blessedness; and this object cannot be known by the senses. There are many so-called arguments for the existence of a God, but men who think that they therefore really believe in the existence of a God are self-deceived. Believing in the existence of a Being to whom this name of God is given must be an act of pure faith. Men must say, "I cannot believe otherwise; I cannot believe the contrary." Then to this must be added the practical impulse to come in contact with him. Note here exactly what is demanded, as the ordinary version fails to give us quite the meaning. He that comes to God must believe in God"s existence, and that when men seek him out and come to know him in actual experience and service, he gives them most real, substantial rewards. For the seeking out diligence is of course required, but diligence is not the quality primarily referred to. "Seek out" is only a more suggestive way of saying "find. Y.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

But without faith - Even some divine faith in God, it is impossible to please him. For he that cometh to God - in prayer, or another act of worship, must believe that he is.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Without faith, that is, without justifying faith, without faith in the Messiah, for that is the faith here spoken of, there is no possibility of pleasing God, and if so, then no possibility of being saved without faith. This appears partly from the divine constitution, God has so appointed it, partly from the nature of the thing itself; faith being the first regular motion of the soul towards God, no works, no duties, no performances whatsoever can please God without faith. He that cometh to God, that is, hath any access or approach to him in a way of worship, or any access or acceptance into his grace and favour, he must believe:

1. God’s being.

2. God’s bounty: That he is: And that he is a rewarder of such as diligently seek him.

Learn hence, 1. That the first point of faith, if we would have anything to do with God, is firmly to believe that there is a God: He that cometh to God, must believe that he is.

Learn, 2. That the fountain of all obedience and service to God, is a firm belief of his being a rewarder of all them that diligently seek him.

Learn, 3. That the whole issue of our finding God when we seek him, depends upon our diligently seeking of him; he is a rewarder of them, of all and only them, that diligently seek him.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

6. But without faith it is impossible, etc. Man cannot please God without faith because in unbelief he cannot do what is pleasing to God. To please God we must come to him in the appointed ways, but this cannot be done without belief in his existence and trust in his blessings.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

6. ὅτι ἔστιν. The object of Faith is both the existence and the Divine government of God. “We trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe” (1Ti 4:10).

γίνεται. “And that He becomes (i.e. shews or proves Himself to be) a rewarder.”

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

6.] The example of Enoch: and axiomatic declaration upon it.

6.] but apart from faith it is impossible (it is a general axiom, not a mere assertion regarding Enoch; if it were, we should expect ἀδύνατον (ἦν) αὐτῷ) to please (Him, as is evident) at all (this sense of doing a single act well pleasing to God, is given by the aorist: cf. Rom 8:8, οἱ δὲ ἐν σαρκὶ ὄντες θεῷ ἀρέσαι οὐ δύνανται. The aor. expresses simply the verbal idea without reference to time; and therefore when in a negative sentence gives the exclusive meaning ‘at any time,’ ‘at all’): for it behoves him that cometh to God (Luther, al. render, “him that will come:” but it is much more probable that ὁ προσερχόμενος is the habitual, official present—‘the comer to God.’ For the expression, see reff. It is that approach which is elsewhere designated ἐγγίζειν τῷ θ., ch. 7:19,—for the purposes of worship or of communion, or of trust, or service generally) to believe (aor., not πιστεύειν, because it is not here the state in which the comer is at his coming, but the state which has originated his coming, of which that coming is the fruit, which is insisted on) that He is (exists: his faith being to him thus a πράγματος ἔλεγχος οὐ βλεπομένου), and becomes (is eventually: ‘evadit’) a renderer of reward (ch. 2:2) to them that seek Him out (ἐκζητέω, more than ζητέω, as ‘exoro’ than ‘oro.’ Thus his faith is also to him an ἐλπιζομένων ὑπόστασις: God’s existence is realized to him by it, and by it his future reward assured).

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.