Hebrews 11

These are all men of God, and their lives set forth what they did by faith. There is what I may call a gradation in their histories, a successional virtue brought out in them. First we have justifying faith in Abel. Then Enoch's faith ending with translation into life. Noah's faith takes him safe through judgment. Abraham has separating faith; and so on, till we culminate at a very interesting point, which proves to me that the apostle Paul was the author of the epistle; it is internal evidence to it, as we say: "Rahab perished not, and what more can I say?" We have got the Gentile into the land, we have got as far as we can go. Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles, and the great thing with him is to show that a Gentile is there. A worldly person in herself, he says, I have placed. her on the same ground as the people of God. It is the only touch of the Gentile that he gives in the epistle.
It is not the varieties of the faith that is brought before us; it is that in these specimens we learn that faith is the cure for everything. If you have faith you can do anything; it only wants the thing to call it out. A different need only calls forth a different phase of it. There are four phases of the moon, but every one knows it is the same moon. Abraham is a man of faith, and he dies a stranger in the land; whilst Moses goes there in triumph. And it is a different thing to the gift of faith; the gift of faith has to do with service; but this is common to all. If a gift be not used for God's glory, but for man's service, it loses its character. Gifts of ministry may be misapplied. Gift belongs to the assembly; and not only to the assembly, but
Christ's gift is for Christ's benefit in his saints.
In this " cloud of witnesses" it is all earthly associations. If you ask what is faith, I answer, here are specimens of what faith can do. It is not the thing proposed to faith that is the difficulty, but it is, if you count on God you can do the greatest thing just as easily as a small one. You cannot in yourself do a small thing a bit better than a large one. Faith is that I count upon what I do not see; if I can see it, it is not faith. As has been said often, a thing that you have been praying about will look less likely than at any time just as it is going to be accomplished. As they say, " the darkest hour is the hour before dawn."
Eve lost faith the moment " she saw." People say what is the harm of a beautiful -view? None, I say, unless it influence you. Look at Paul in the shipwreck: the master says, go on; all the passengers say, go on; but Paul says, I would not. But then there was a third thing: the south wind blew softly; that was Providence. But no, says Paul, I will not look at Providence. If I look for wind, I shall not get it; but if I am going with God, I shall find Providence fall in with me. Sad to say we know so little of faith; that is the reason we are influenced so much by what we see.