Travelling at the speed of faith
I’m sure you have heard it said: “You can do anything if you try hard enough”. Do you believe that? Can a snail outrun a gazelle if it tries hard enough?
I might carry a bit of excess weight but I can lean on a mountain all day, with intent, and I’ll never shift it.
When I was 18 I could have trained 22 hours a day and I would never have become an Olympic sprinter.
But the first part of the statement is close – “I can do anything, or ALL things, through God who gives me strength” (Philippians 4: 13). But do we really believe that?
The human race is obsessed with ‘speed’. Sometimes we walk – probably not often enough. But we are quick to use our cars or get on a plane. With a click of the computer mouse we can send instant messages around the world. Recently, Austrian, Felix Baumgartner, ventured 40 kilometres towards space and when he free-fell under the earth’s gravitational pull he became the first unaided human missile to break the sound barrier.
We generally like to be active but often we get very weary achieving very little – we are so busy that we ignore the wisdom of travelling at the speed of faith.
“Come apart and rest awhile”, says Jesus. But to our cluttered thinking, when we’ve got many kilometres to travel, resting is about as useless as sitting in our vehicle in a parking bay with the engine turned off when we’ve still got 500 kilometres to travel.
We have all experienced physical weariness. But it’s the weariness of the soul that troubles us the most. For the soul can only take so much of guilt, of tragedy and pain. One of the most beautiful promises in the book of Hebrews is the promise of soul rest in chapter 4 and verse 3: “we who have believed enter that rest”.
The first century AD was an age of unrest, terrible calamities, earthquakes and volcanoes were shaking the Roman world. But deeper than that was the dissatisfaction with the gods and the mystery religions of the day. The Romans craved rest and the Jews even more so. The Roman yoke rested upon them and AD 70 saw the destruction of their capital and the death of a million people. The Jewish Christians had a double bondage. They were hated by Romans and fellow Jews alike. For the Jewish Christian there was both confusion and unrest of spirit. What was God doing? He had established this blessed race of Jews, the edifice of Judaism, and now he was permitting it to be torn apart. It was to the Jewish Christian that the apostle wrote, “We who have believed do enter into rest”.
But soul rest is so often elusive. Remember the dove that Noah released from the ark? Day after day it flew and found no place to rest its foot – that’s like the soul of man. Or to paraphrase the words of Jesus, “The foxes have holes and the birds have nests but the soul of man has no place to lay His head”. And yet the Jewish scriptures were full of the thought of rest and the promise of rest. After creation there was a rest with the Almighty spreading His arms and saying “Come unto Me and I will give you a ‘Sabbath’ rest”.
Canaan was meant to be a land of rest. After centuries of bondage and oppression Moses came, promising rest – rest from slavery, rest in the promised land of Canaan. Please note what it says in Hebrews 3 regarding Israel’s reactions to the promises. You’ll notice verse 8 of chapter 3 speaks about the day of rebellion. Verse 10 says God was angry with that generation. Verse 11 says they will never enter my rest and then verse18 – they were unable to enter Canaan because of unbelief.
Why didn’t Israel experience the soul rest that God had promised? It was because of unbelief. While wandering in the wilderness, even though they followed a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, they still struggled to travel at the speed of faith.
There is really only one problem and if that problem is solved all the others will be solved. It is not the calamities that come our way. It’s our spirit of rebellion. You know a bird in a cage can injure itself beating against the wires. It might as well just sit back and sing. It is our selfishness that leads to our discontent. Martin Luther said, ‘It is our self-love that is the root of all our disquietude and pain’.
Genuine faith in the gospel purges us, refines us, takes away the rebellion and thus we enter into rest. No longer are we an autonomous pilot peering from the bow of our ship into the murky darkness looking to thread a pathway through the rocks and the quicksand. When we travel by faith we have taken a Pilot on board and He knows where He is going. He knows what He is doing. “I am with you always, Jesus said, even unto the end”. “All things work together for good for those who love God”. “God has a thousand ways about which we know nothing”. And even at death when we go over the edge and drop, we drop into the arms of the Saviour. We have a greater rest beyond. We who believe enter that rest.
The problem for Israel was that while Moses and Aaron showed signs, Israel did not believe that God had sent them, despite the promise in Genesis that God would visit them and rescue them from slavery; despite Moses saying, “The hour of your deliverance is here”.
They had to see the signs of the leprosy and the water turned to blood – when they saw the signs they believed – but only for a short time. God gave them a raft of signs (Exodus chapters 7 – 11) – signs in the heaven, signs in the earth, death in the herd, death in the home and death on the Egyptian throne. Signs among the living and among the dead, among the darkness and in the dirt – an abundance of signs – and Israel believed.
But it wasn’t genuine belief. God led them out of Egypt and suddenly they saw a great river between them and the ‘promised land’. They lapsed back into unbelief. “Are you about to bury us here? Were there no graves in Egypt? What’s God up to? Moses, you ought to be stoned!
God was longing for some Israelite mother to say to her children, “We have never seen God smash a tunnel through the mountains or plough a path through the sea – but our God can do it! But Israel couldn’t see, so they disbelieved. And then when God did plough a path through the seas and the water drowned the pursuing Egyptians, it says “The Israelites believed when they saw the Egyptians dead”.
‘Seeing is believing’, is a worldly philosophy. The Christian philosophy is ‘believing is seeing’. Jesus said to Nathaniel, “Believest Thou? – you’ll see greater things than these”. To Thomas Jesus said, “Because you have seen, you have believed, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”. True faith accepts the Word of God before it sees anything.
God brings the Israelites to Marah and the waters are bitter. Will they trust him now? Do they believe God can create something that can change the bitter waters to sweet? They murmur against God. But God gave Moses a tree branch – symbolic of the tree of the cross. Friends, only the cross can sweeten the bitter waters of sorrow, sickness, tragedy, loss and guilt. So God changes the water and it becomes sweet. They travel on further and there is no food and because they can’t see a supermarket they murmur. Then God sends manna and when they taste and feel and touch, they believe.
Then they come to Rephidim. Again, there is no water. Again they murmur and grumble and complain. They had to see before they believed. That’s why God told those Israelites that did make Canaan that they had to march around Jericho and give a shout of faith, before the walls fell down. God wanted a people who would trust Him without seeing. Those who wait to see and hear and touch before they can rejoice may never be happy or if they are, their joy will be short-lived.
Twenty centuries ago Jesus gave His all for us. In the sign of the cross we see that Christ is one hundred percent for us. We need no other sign. If we don’t accept the sign of the cross nothing else will move us to faith. God has spoken His last word at the cross. For the past twenty centuries there has been no Mt. Sinai – only Mt. Golgotha. If seeing an agonized Jesus lifted up on the cross doesn’t bring us to faith, then nothing will.
For Israel, until Sinai, there were signs aplenty. There was Jehovah with millions of His angels. There was the sound of the trumpet exceeding loud. There was smoke and the mountain trembled. But then God tested them with 6 weeks without signs. No Jehovah. No Moses – he had gone up into the mountain to be with God. The mountain had stopped trembling. There was no trumpet sound. Where are our signs? What’s happened to our signs? Let’s make us gods so we can see – so they made and danced around a golden calf. They had to have something to see!
And then came the greatest sign of all – God forgave them.
Was it any better in New Testament times? Had Israel improved? No, the Jews come to Jesus and ask, “What sign do you show?” They are still looking for signs. Still lusting to see and feel and hear. “What works shall we work so that we may work the works of God”, they ask? The work of God is that you believe.
Was it any better with His disciples? In John chapter 6, the thousands flock to Jesus and Jesus heals them and teaches them – and now they are pale, wan and weary. Jesus turns to Philip and asks, “Well, how are we going to provide lunch for this lot?” Philip looks at the problem and says, “Even if we had a fortune we couldn’t pay for food for everyone”. He looked at the problem – he didn’t look to Jesus. Jesus turned to Thomas and Thomas looked at the available resources and said, “The best we can do is a little boy here with his lunch. But what can that do”? He looked at the resources. Looking, looking, ever-looking – but not trusting. The little boy gave what he had to Jesus and looked up into His face. Thousands were fed because of his faith. It was the prophet Isaiah who had predicted “A little child shall lead them (Isaiah 11: 6)”.
And then when they want to make Him a king so they can see the Romans dead and they can see Jerusalem as the capital of the world, Jesus had to send His disciples away because they were involved in the scheming too. They go away in a boat and because there are mutinous storm clouds in their hearts, God sends them another storm. It’s an interesting thing. Troubles are like cannibals. Big troubles come along and eat up the little ones. Here the disciples were grumbling because Jesus wouldn’t let Himself be made king, so Jesus sends them another storm. In John 6 you see a wonderful illustration of what it is like to travel at the speed of faith. Verse18 -The sea rose because a strong wind was blowing. Then they see Jesus walking on the sea and they are frightened. We are often frightened when God comes near to us? He means us well but we are so suspicious of God. Why are we suspicious of Him who gave up everything for us?
The disciples failed to note that the very billows that were threatening to come down on their heads were actually under Jesus’ feet. What a revelation of the reality of life that is to the Christian. Suddenly we see that those very tempests that threaten to inundate us are in fact under the feet of Jesus. Jesus walks on stormy seas – they are a footpath to Him. Life’s tempests won’t drown us while Jesus is walking the sea of life with us. Then it says they took Him on board – and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.
They’d been frantically rowing and getting nowhere relying on their own resources. But immediately they took Jesus on board, they reached their destination.
So, what it’s mean to travel at the speed of faith? Take Jesus on board, take Jesus into your life by faith, give everything over to Him, and you will joyfully and rewardingly find out!
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