Do Not Put Faith in People.

by Dwight L. Moody

FAITH IS AN OUTWARD LOOK. 

We are to have faith in God, and not in man. A great many people place their faith in men, and they pin their faith to other people’s doctrines and creeds. If their church teaches it, they believe it. All the churches in the world can’t save a soul. It is not to have faith in this church or that church, this doctrine or that doctrine, this man or that man, but it is to have faith in the man Christ Jesus at the right hand of God. That is the only faith that will ever save a soul.

PUT NO CONFIDENCE IN MAN. 

Let me call your attention to a few verses where God has warned us not to put faith in man: Jeremiah xvii. 5: “Thus says the Lord; Cursed be the man who trusts in man, and makes flesh his arm, and whose heart departs from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good comes; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited. 

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.” You will find some men have not faith in God; they are like a tree that is withered and blasted. And there is a man perhaps right along next to them who has strong faith in God; “he is like a tree planted by the rivers of water; his leaf also shall not wither.” Why? He trusts in the living God. 

It is a terrible thing for man to put faith in man. Then Psalm cxlvi. 3: “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goes forth, he returns to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish. 

"“Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of me; ...Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God.” 

Now here we are told very plainly by God that we are not to put our trust in this man or that man—not to lean upon an arm of flesh. All the ministers in the world and all the potentates in the church put together cannot save one soul. It is thoroughly impossible. 

It is the Lord who can save, and the Lord alone; therefore we want to get our eyes away from man, from the church, and right straight up to the man Christ Jesus. We read in Mark 11:22 whom we are to believe in. Christ says—and how sweet it sounds—“Have faith in God.” I never saw a man or woman in my life that had faith in God who was confounded; I do not care what their troubles or trials were. Have faith in God, and not in man.