The Sin of Unbelief

The Sin of Unbelief

“And that lord answered the man of God, and said, Now, behold, if the Lord should make windows in heaven, might such a thingbe? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes but shalt not eat thereof”—2 Kings 7:19.

ONE WISE man may deliver a whole city; one good man may be the means of safety to a thousand others. The holy ones are “thesalt of the earth,” the means of the preservation of the wicked. Without the godly as a conserve, the race would be utterlydestroyed. In the city of Samaria there was one righteous man—Elisha, the servant of the Lord. Piety was altogether extinctin the court. The king was a sinner of the blackest dye, his iniquity was glaring and infamous. Jehoramwalked in the ways of his father Ahab, and made unto himself false gods. The people of Samaria were fallen like theirmonarch: they had gone astray from Jehovah; they had forsaken the God of Israel; they remembered not the watchword of Jacob,“The Lord thy God is one God;” and in wicked idolatry they bowed before the idols of the heathens, and therefore the Lordof Hosts suffered their enemies to oppress them until the curse of Ebal was fulfilled in the streets of Samaria, for “thetender anddelicate woman who would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness,” had an evil eyeto her own children, and devoured her offspring by reason of fierce hunger (Deut 28:56-58). In this awful extremity the one holy man was the medium of salvation. The one grain of salt preserved the entire city;the one warrior for God was the means of the deliverance of the whole beleaguered multitude. For Elisha’s sake the Lord sentthe promise that the next day, food whichcould not be obtained at any price, should be had at the cheapest possible rate—at the very gates of Samaria. We may picturethe joy of the multitude when first the seer uttered this prediction. They knew him to be a prophet of the Lord; he had divinecredentials; all his past prophecies had been fulfilled. They knew that he was a man sent of God, and uttering Jehovah’s message.Surely the monarch’s eyes would glisten with delight, and the emaciated multitude would leap for joy at theprospects of so speedy a release from famine. “To-morrow,” would they shout, ”to-morrow our hunger shall be over, and we shall feast to the full.”

However, the lord on whom the king leaned expressed his disbelief. We hear not that any of the common people, the plebeians,ever did so; but an aristocrat did it. Strange it is, that God has seldom chosen the great men of this world. High placesand faith in Christ do seldom well agree. This great man said, “Impossible!” and, with an insult to the prophet, he added,“If the Lord should make windows in heaven, might such a thing be.” His sin lay in the fact, that afterrepeated seals of Elisha’s ministry, he yet disbelieved the assurances uttered by the prophet on God’s behalf. He had,doubtless, seen the marvelous defeat of Moab; he had been startled at tidings of the resurrection of the Shunamite’s son;he knew that Elisha had revealed Benhadad’s secrets and smitten his marauding hosts with blindness; he had seen the bandsof Syria decoyed into the heart of Samaria; and he probably knew the story of the widow, whose oil filled all the vessels,and redeemedher sons; at all events the cure of Naaman was common conversation at court; and yet, in the face of all this accumulatedevidence, in the teeth of all these credentials of the prophet’s mission, he yet doubted, and insultingly told him that heavenmust become an open casement, ere the promise could be performed. Whereupon God pronounced his doom by the mouth of the manwho had just now proclaimed the promise: “thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof.” Andprovidence—which always fulfills prophecy, just as the paper takes the stamp of the type—destroyed the man. Trodden downin the streets of Samaria, he perished at its gates, beholding the plenty, but tasting not of it. Perhaps his carriage washaughty, and insulting to the people; or he tried to restrain their eager rush; or, as we would say, it might have been bymere accident that he was crushed to death; so that he saw the prophecy fulfilled, but never lived to enjoy it. In his case,seeing was believing, but it was not enjoying.

I shall this morning invite your attention to two things—the man’s sin and his punishment. Perhaps I shall say but little of this man, since I have detailed the circumstances, but I shall discourseupon the sin of unbelief and the punishment thereof.

I. And first, the SIN.

His sin was unbelief. He doubted the promise of God. In this particular case unbelief took the form of a doubt of the divine veracity, or a mistrustof God’s power. Either he doubted whether God really meant what he said, or whether it was within the range of possibilitythat God should fulfill his promise. Unbelief hath more phases than the moon, and more colors than the chameleon. Common peoplesay of the devil, that he is seen sometimes in one shape, andsometimes in another. I am sure this is true of Satan’s first-born child—unbelief, for its forms are legion. At one timeI see unbelief dressed out as an angel of light. It calls itself humility, and it saith, “I would not be presumptuous; I darenot think that God would pardon me; I am too great a sinner.” We call that humility, and thank God that our friend is in sogood a condition. I do not thank God for any such delusion. It is the devil dressed as an angel of light; it is unbelief afterall. At other times we detect unbelief in the shape of a doubt of God’s immutability: “The Lord has loved me, but perhapshe will cast me off to-morrow. He helped me yesterday, and under the shadows of his wings I trust; but perhaps I shall receiveno help in the next affliction. He may have cast me off; he may be unmindful of his covenant, and forget to be gracious.”Sometimes this infidelity is embodied in a doubt of God’s power. We see every day new straits, we are involved in a net ofdifficulties, and we think “surely the Lord cannot deliver us.” We strive to get rid of our burden, and finding that wecannot do it, we think God’s arm is as short as ours, and his power as little as human might. A fearful form of unbelief isthat doubt which keeps men from coming to Christ; which leads the sinner to distrust the ability of Christ to save him, todoubt the willingness of Jesus to accept so great a transgressor. But the most hideous of all is the traitor, in its truecolors,blaspheming God, and madly denying his existence. Infidelity, deism, and atheism, are the ripe fruits of this pernicioustree; they are the most terrific eruptions of the volcano of unbelief. Unbelief hath become of full stature, when quittingthe mask and laying aside disguise, it profanely stalks the earth, uttering the rebellious cry, “No God,” striving in vainto shake the throne of the divinity, by lifting up its arm against Jehovah, and in its arrogance would

“Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,

Re-judge his justice—be the god of God.”

Then truly unbelief has come to its full perfection, and then you see what it really is, for the least unbelief is of thesame nature as the greatest.

I am astonished, and I am sure you will be, when I tell you that there are some strange people in the world who do not believethat unbelief is a sin. Strange people I must call them, because they are sound in their faith in every other respect; only,to make the articles of their creed consistent, as they imagine, they deny that unbelief is sinful. I remember a young mangoing into a circle of friends and ministers, who were disputing whether it was a sin in men that theydid not believe the gospel. Whilst they were discussing it, he said, “Gentlemen am I in the presence of Christians? Areyou believers in the Bible, or are you not?” They said, “We are Christians of course.” “Then,” said he, “does not the Scripturesay, ‘of sin, because they believed not on me?’ And is it not the damning sin of sinners, that they do not believe on Christ?”I could not have thought that persons should be so fool-hardy as to venture to assert that, “it is no sin for a sinner notto believe on Christ.” I thought that, however far they might wish to push their sentiments, they would not tell a lieto uphold the truth, and, in my opinion this is what such men are really doing. Truth is a strong tower and never requiresto be buttressed with error. God’s Word will stand against all man’s devices. I would never invent a sophism to prove thatit is no sin on the part of the ungodly not to believe, for I am sure it is, when I am taught in the Scriptures that, “Thisis thecondemnation, that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light,” and when I read, “He that believethnot is condemned already, because he believeth not on the Son of God,” I affirm, and the Word declares it, unbelief is a sin. Surely with rational and unprejudiced persons, it cannot require any reasoning to prove it. Is it not a sin for a creatureto doubt the word of its Maker? Is it not a crime and an insult to the Divinity, for me, an atom, a particle ofdust, to dare to deny his words? Is it not the very summit of arrogance and extremity of pride for a son of Adam to say,even in his heart, “God I doubt thy grace; God I doubt thy love; God I doubt thy power?” Oh! sirs believe me, could ye rollall sins into one mass,—could you take murder, and blasphemy, and lust, adultery, and fornication, and everything that isvile and unite them all into one vast globe of black corruption, they would not equal even then the sin of unbelief. Thisis themonarch sin, the quintessence of guilt; the mixture of the venom of all crimes; the dregs of the wine of Gomorrah; itis the A1 sin, the master-piece of Satan, the chief work of the devil.

I shall attempt this morning, for a little while, to shew the extremely evil nature of the sin of unbelief.

1.

And let me say here, that unbelief in the Christian is of the self-same nature as unbelief in the sinner. It is not the samein its final issue, for it will be pardoned in the Christian; yea it is pardoned: it was laid upon the scapegoat’s head ofold: it was blotted out and atoned for; but it is of the same sinful nature. In fact, if there can be one sin more heinousthan the unbelief of a sinner, it is the unbelief of a saint. For a saint to doubt God’s word—for asaint to distrust God after innumerable instances of his love, after ten thousand proofs of his mercy, exceeds everything.In a saint, moreover, unbelief is the root of other sins. When I am perfect in faith, I shall be perfect in everything else;I should always fulfill the precept if I always believed the promise. But it is because my faith is weak, that I sin. Putme in trouble, and if I can fold my arms and say, “Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord will provide,” you will not find me using wrongmeansto escape from it. But let me be in temporal distress and difficulty; if I distrust God, what then? Perhaps I shall steal,or do a dishonest act to get out of the hands of my creditors; or if kept from such a transgression, I may plunge into excessto drown my anxieties. Once take away faith, the reins are broken; and who can ride an unbroken steed without rein or bridle?Like the chariot of the sun, with Phaeton for its driver, such should we be without faith. Unbelief is the mother of vice;it is the parent of sin; and, therefore, I say it is a pestilent evil—a master sin.

2.

“Law and terrors do but harden,

All the while they work alone:

But a sense of blood-bought pardon

Will dissolve a heart of stone.”

Methinks the tale of Calvary is enough to break a rock. Rocks did rend when they saw Jesus die. Methinks the tragedy of Golgothais enough to make a flint gush with tears, and to make the most hardened wretch weep out his eyes in drops of penitentiallove; but yet we tell it you, and repeat it oft, but who weeps over it? Who cares about it? Sirs, ye sit as unconcerned asif it did not signify to you. Oh! behold and see all ye that pass by. Is it nothing to you that Jesusshould die? Ye seem to say “It is nothing.” What is the reason? Because there is unbelief between you and the cross. Ifthere were not that thick veil between you and the Saviour’s eyes, his looks of love would melt you. But unbelief is the sinwhich keeps the power of the gospel from working in the sinner: and it is not till the Holy Ghost strikes that unbelief out—itis not till the Holy Spirit rends away that infidelity and takes it altogether down, that we can find the sinner coming toput his trust in Jesus.

3.

Faith fosters every virtue; unbelief murders every one. Thousands of prayers have been strangled in their infancy by unbelief.Unbelief has been guilty of infanticide; it has murdered many an infant petition; many a song of praise that would have swelledthe chorus of the skies, has been stifled by an unbelieving murmur; many a noble enterprise conceived in the heart has beenblighted ere it could come forth, by unbelief. Many a man would have been a missionary; would havestood and preached his Master’s gospel boldly; but he had unbelief. Once make a giant unbelieving, and he becomes a dwarf.Faith is the Samsonian lock of the Christian; cut it off, and you may put out his eyes—and he can do nothing.

4.

And, oh! do you not know that unbelief kept Moses and Aaron out of Canaan? They honored not God; they struck the rock whenthey ought to have spoken to it. They disbelieved: and therefore the punishment came upon them, that they should not inheritthat good land, for which they had toiled and labored.

Let me take you where Moses and Aaron dwelt—to the vast and howling wilderness. We will walk about it for a time; sons ofthe weary foot, we will become like the wandering Bedouins, we will tread the desert for a while. There lies a carcass whitenedin the sun; there another, and there another. What means these bleached bones? What are these bodies—there a man, and therea woman? What are all these? How came these corpses here? Surely some grand encampment must havebeen here cut off in a single night by a blast, or by bloodshed. Ah; no, no. Those bones are the bones of Israel; thoseskeletons are the old tribes of Jacob. They could not enter because of unbelief. They trusted not in God. Spies said theycould not conquer the land. Unbelief was the cause of their death. It was not the Anakims that destroyed Israel; it was notthe howling wilderness which devoured them; it was not the Jordan which proved a barrier to Canaan; neither Hivite or Jebusiteslewthem; it was unbelief alone which kept them out of Canaan. What a doom to be pronounced on Israel, after forty years ofjourneying: they could not enter because of unbelief!

Not to multiply instances, recollect Zechariah. He doubted, and the angel struck him dumb. His mouth was closed because ofunbelief. But oh! if you would have the worst picture of the effects of unbelief—if you would see how God has punished it,I must take you to the siege of Jerusalem, that worst massacre which time has ever seen; when the Romans razed the walls tothe ground, and put the whole of the inhabitants to the sword, or sold them as slaves in themarket-place. Have you never read of the destruction of Jerusalem, by Titus? Did you never turn to the tragedy of Masada,when the Jews stabbed each other rather than fall into the hands of the Romans? Do you not know, that to this day the Jewwalks through the earth a wanderer, without a home and without a land? He is cut off, as a branch is cut from a vine; andwhy? Because of unbelief. Each time ye see a Jew with a sad and somber countenance—each time ye mark him like a denizen ofanotherland, treading as an exile in this our country—each time ye see him, pause and say, “Ah! it was unbelief which causedthee to murder Christ, and now it has driven thee to be a wanderer; and faith alone—faith in the crucified Nazarene—can fetchthee back to thy country, and restore it to its ancient grandeur.” Unbelief, you see, has the Cain-mark upon its forehead.God hates it; God has dealt hard blows upon it: and God will ultimately crush it. Unbelief dishonors God. Every other crimetouches God’s territory; but unbelief aims a blow at his divinity, impeaches his veracity, denies his goodness, blasphemeshis attributes, maligns his character; therefore, God of all things, hates first and chiefly, unbelief, wherever it is.

5.

II. This brings us now to conclude with the PUNISHMENT.

“Thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof.” Listen unbelievers! ye have heard this morning your sin; nowlisten to your doom: “Ye shall see it with your eyes, but shalt not eat thereof.” It is so often with God’s own saints. Whenthey are unbelieving, they see the mercy with their eyes, but do not eat it. Now, here is corn in this land of Egypt; butthere are some of God’s saints who come here on the Sabbath, and say, “I do not know whether the Lordwill be with me or not.” Some of them say, “Well, the gospel is preached, but I do not know whether it will be successful.”They are always doubting and fearing. Listen to them when they get out of the chapel. “Well, did you get a good meal thismorning?” “Nothing for me.” Of course not. Ye could see it with your eyes, but did not eat it, because you had no faith. Ifyou had come up with faith, you would have had a morsel. I have found Christians, who have grown so very critical, that ifthewhole portion of the meat they are to have, in due season, is not cut up exactly into square pieces, and put upon somechoice dish of porcelain, they cannot eat it. Then they ought to go without; and they will have to go without, until theyare brought to their appetites. They will have some affliction, which will act like quinine upon them: they will be made toeat by means of bitters in their mouths; they will be put in prison for a day or two until their appetite returns, and thenthey willbe glad to eat the most ordinary food, off the most common platter, or no platter at all. But the real reason why God’speople do not feed under a gospel ministry, is, because they have not faith. If you believed, if you did but hear one promise,that would be enough; if you only heard one good thing from the pulpit here would be food for your soul, for it is not thequantity we hear, but the quantity we believe, that does us good—it is that which we receive into our hearts with true andlively faith, that is our profit.

But, let me apply this chiefly to the unconverted. They often see great works of God done with their eyes, but they do noteat thereof. A crowd of people have come here this morning to see with their eyes, but I doubt whether all of them eat. Mencannot eat with their eyes, for if they could, most would be well fed. And, spiritually, persons cannot feed simply with theirears, nor simply with looking at the preacher; and so we find the majority of our congregations comejust to see; “Ah, let us hear what this babbler would say, this reed shaken in the wind.” But they have no faith; theycome, and they see, and see, and see, and never eat. There is some one in the front there, who gets converted; and some onedown below, who is called by sovereign grace; some poor sinner is weeping under a sense of his blood-guiltiness; another iscrying for mercy to God: and another is saying, “Have mercy upon me, a sinner.” A great work is going on in this chapel, butsome ofyou do not know anything about it; you have no work going on in your hearts, and why? Because ye think it is impossible;ye think God is not at work. He has not promised to work for you who do not honor him. Unbelief makes you sit here in timesof revival and of the outpouring of God’s grace, unmoved, uncalled, unsaved.

But, sirs, the worst fulfillment of this doom is to come! Good Whitefield used sometimes to lift up both his hands and shout,as I wish I could shout, but my voice fails me. “The wrath to come! the wrath to come!” It is not the wrath now you have tofear, but the wrath to come; and there shall be a doom to come, when “ye shall see it with your eyes, but shall not eat thereof.”Methinks I see the last great day. The last hour of time has struck. I heard the bell toll itsdeath knell—time was, eternity is ushered in; the sea is boiling; the waves are lit up with supernatural splendour. Isee a rainbow—a flying cloud, and on it there is a throne, and on that throne sits one like unto the Son of Man. I know him.In his hand he holds a pair of balances; just before him the books,—the book of life, the book of death, the book of remembrance.I see his splendour, and I rejoice at it; I behold his pompous appearance, and I smile with gladness that he is come tobe “admired of all his saints.” But there stands a throng of miserable wretches, crouching in horror to conceal themselves,and yet looking, for their eyes must look on him whom they have pierced; but when they look they cry, “Hide me from the face.”What face? “Rocks, hide me from the face.” What face? “The face of Jesus, the man who died, but now is come to judgment.”But ye cannot be hidden from his face; ye must see it with your eyes: but ye will not sit on the right hand, dressed in robesof grandeur; and when the triumphal procession of Jesus in the clouds shall come, ye shall not march in it; ye shall seeit, but ye shall not be there. Oh! methinks I see it now, the mighty Saviour in his chariot, riding on the rainbow to heaven.See how his mighty coursers make the sky rattle while he drives them up heaven’s hill. A train girt in white follow behindhim, and at his chariot wheels he drags the devil, death, and hell. Hark, how they clap their hands. Hark, how they shout.“Thouhast ascended up on high; thou hast led captivity captive.” Hark, how they chant the solemn lay, “Hallelujah, the LordGod omnipotent reigneth.” See the splendour of their appearance; mark the crown upon their brows; see their snow-white garments;mark the rapture of their countenances; hear how their song swells up to heaven while the Eternal joins therein, saying, “Iwill rejoice over them with joy, I will rejoice over them with singing, for I have betrothed thee unto me in everlastinglovingkindness.” But where are you all the while? Ye can see them up there, but where are you? Looking at it with youreyes, but you cannot eat thereof. The marriage banquet is spread; the good old wines of eternity are broached; they sit downto the feast of the king; but there are you, miserable, and famishing, and ye cannot eat thereof. Oh! how ye wring your hands.Might ye but have one morsel from the table—might ye but be dogs beneath the table. You shall be a dog in hell, but not adogin heaven.

But to conclude. Methinks I see thee in some place in hell, tied to a rock, the vulture of remorse gnawing thy heart; andup there is Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom. You lift up your eyes and you see who it is. “That is the poor man who lay on my dunghill,and the dogs licked his sores; there he is in heaven, while I am cast down. Lazarus—yes, it is Lazarus; and I who was richin the world of time am here in hell. Father Abraham, send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of hisfinger in water, to cool my tongue.” But no! it cannot be; it cannot be. And whilst you lie there, if there be one thingin hell worse than another, it will be seeing the saints in heaven. Oh, to think of seeing my mother in heaven while I amcast out! Oh, sinner, only think, to see thy brother in heaven—he who was rocked in the selfsame cradle, and played beneaththe same roof-tree—yet thou art cast out. And, husband, there is thy wife in heaven, and thou art amongst the damned. Andseestthou, father! thy child is before the throne; and thou! accursed of God and accursed of man, art in hell. Oh, the hellof hells will be to see our friends in heaven, and ourselves lost. I beseech you, my hearers, by the death of Christ—by hisagony and bloody sweat—by his cross and passion—by all that is holy—by all that is sacred in heaven and earth—by all thatis solemn in time or eternity—by all that is horrible in hell, or glorious in heaven—by that awful thought, “forever,”—I beseech you lay these things to heart, and remember that if you are damned, it will be unbelief that damns you.If you are lost, it will be because ye believed not on Christ; and if you perish, this shall be the bitterest drop of gall—thatye did not trust in the Saviour.