(Preached at Emmanuel Baptist Church, Sunday night, January 22, 1961)
". . .the just shall live by faith." (HABAKKUK 2:4)
This great life-changing verse is found four times in the Bible. I would like for us to see the four books of the Bible where this verse is found and the central theme of each of these four books.
LOCATION: CENTRAL THEME:
Habakkuk 2:4 The Consistency of God
Romans 1:17 The Righteousness of God
Galatians 3:11 The Superiority of Faith
Hebrews 10:38 The Superiority of Christ
Habakkuk means "wrestler." The prophet of God wrestled with the Lord about the sin of the people and the justice of God.
God had told the prophet that the wicked and cruel Chaldeans would be used to punish the backslidden nation of Israel. The Prophet Habakkuk was preplexed as to how God could look upon such a sinful nation as Chaldea and use them to punish His own people Israel. God gave him the answer in Habakkuk 2:4:
"Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith."
# 2 _The hearts of the proud Chaldeans and many of Israel were puffed up, lifted up against God. They were self-relying. There were those, however, who trusted God and learned on Him for their salvation and deliverance. They were self-renouncing. God is simply saying in Habakkuk 2:4 that justification by faith will solve the problem.
# 3 _Notice this great verse as it is found four times in the Word of God. In Habakkuk it has seven words, "the just shall live by his faith. " In the other three uses of this statement there are only six words, "the just shall live by faith." This great truth, justification by faith, was used as the basis for Paul's great argument in all of his epistles for the righteousness and mercy of God. God rules out every hope or effort to obtain God's righteousness, except by faith. He used this great foundation truth against those who hoped to be saved by the Law. This truth eliminates the possibility of being saved by works and rules out all hope of salvation through the observance of sacraments. This verse points men to the cross and the sacrificial work of Christ thereon. It points men to the empty tomb.
"The just shall live by his faith."
# 4 _There is not a greater verse in the Bible than this one on how to be a Christian, what it means to be a Christian, and how God can make of you a Christian if you want to be one. This is the verse that revolutionized the life and saved the soul of Martin Luther. I am sure you are all familiar with how he was saved. Martin Luther was climbing the so-called "Sancta Scala" or the sacred stairs. In the city of Rome__right now and all day today__people are climbing those stairs. Mrs. Malone and I had the privilege some years ago to stand at the foot of the stairs and watch people climb up them on their knees. Then we walked up to the top another way. There we saw a silver star. It had a piece of glass in the middle, on which church officials claim are some drops of the blood of Jesus Christ.
# 5 __Those stairs, supposedly and according to the Roman Catholic church, are the ones taken out of Pilate's judgment hall, the stairs up which Jesus climbed on the night He was judged by Pilate and betrayed by Judas. It is said that those stairs were moved from Jerusalem and placed in Rome.
# 6 __People have believed that, and for hundreds of years they have been climbing those stairs, called the "sacred stairs." Confessing their sins step by step as they climb up on their keens, as they reach the top, they bend over and kiss the spot supposedly where the blood of Jesus was shed. There is supposed to be something efficacious about their climbing those stairs, something that would cause them to get forgiveness of their sins.
# 7 __Martin Luther, a Catholic monk and a scholarly man, a student of the Bible who memorized every single word in the book of Romans, was one time climbing those stairs on his knees, confessing his sins, longing to be free and delivered from the guilt of sin. About the middle of the way up, all of a sudden Romans 1:17 flashed across his mind: "The just shall live by faith." He then descended the stairs and was born again by the Spirit of God__saved by believing in Jesus Christ. From that moment on, Luther put on confidence in the law or good works to save his soul from sin. That verse revolutionized the life of Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation.
# 8 __I would to God tonight that out of this verse there will come to us some truth that will grip the hearts of both saved and lost. As I have already said, this verse is found four times in the Bible__here in chapter 2 of Habakkuk and three times in the New Testament. Each of the three times in the New Testament (in ROMANS, in GALATIANS, in HEBREWS), there are just six words__
"The just shall live b y faith." Just imagine that these six words are written across the front of this church in blazing fire: THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. I want us to see tonight the emphasis God puts upon this great salvation verse. There are six words, found in three books, each book emphasizing two words. Romans emphasizes the first two: "the just." Galatians emphasizes the middle two: "shall live." Hebrews emphasizes the last two: "by faith."
# 9 __"The Just" __In Romans 1:17 is this phrase, "THE JUST shall live by faith." Romans emphasizes those first two words__"the just." When you read in the Bible of a just man, you are reading of someone God looks upon and sees as righteous. In fact, throughout the Bible "just and "righteous" are almost synonymous. So to be just before God is to be righteous before God.
# 10 _Let's see what the Bible teaches in the book of Job. In chapter 9, verse 2, Job pondered this question" "How should man be just with God?" or, "How can a man be righteous?" All of us have pondered that question. You wouldn't have to convince and Christian that he has sinned against God. Any saved person knows he was saved from sin, knows that he has been guilty before God of breaking His law, of rejecting His Son, of grieving His Spirit, of counting the blood as an unholy thing. People know that they have sinned. Knowing that, Job asked, "How can a man like me ever be righteous in the eyes of God? What can God do with my sin? How can a holy, righteous God ever make me holy and righteous in His sight?"
# 11 __Some men in the Bible were just and righteous. In Genesis 6:9 we read that "Noah was a just man and perfect in his generation." The verse before that says, "Noah found grace in the eye of the Lord." Because of the grace of God and Noah's believing faith, God said, "There is a righteous man."
# 12 __Noah was not righteous because he built an ark and believed that it was going to rain. Noah was righteous because he found grace in the eyes of the Lord and, believing God's Word, he put his faith in God. We know that the ark was a type of Christ, and I think it safe to say that Noah believed in a Saviour yet to come. When one believes in Jesus Christ, the righteousness of God is imputed unto him. "For what saith the Scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness" (ROMANS 4:3).
# 13 __Six times in Romans 4 God uses the word impute, meaning "to put down to a person's account." Three times in the chapter we find the word reckon, meaning the same thing. Twice in the same chapter we find the word count, which also means the same thing. Eleven times in one chapter God says He imputes His righteousness or puts to our account the righteousness of Christ when we believe upon Him. God imputed our sin to Christ on the cross, and He imputes His spotless righteousness to us who believe.
# 14 __If I were to examine or talk to you tonight with no light from the Scripture, I would say this next man was not such a good fellow. His name was Lot. Lot was a Christian, but a poor one. He left the fellowship of his sweet and godly Uncle Abraham and moved into the sinful city of Sodom, in which city he lost his family and testimony. He did not win one single soul to Christ except his two daughters. He even let his sons-in-law go to Hell, as well as his wife and all the other people of that city. So I would say he was not a good Christian, wouldn't you?
# 15 __But in II Peter 2:7 we read, ". . .And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked." Looking back into the Bible, back into the book of Genesis, II Peter calls Lot a "just" man. Why? When we look back through this Word of God__from II Peter back to the book of Genesis__we see the cross of Calvary and Jesus dying on the cross for Lot's sin, as well as yours and mine. Looking through the cross, through the blood and through the atoning work of Christ, God said Lot had been declared righteous in the eyes of God.
# 16 __Now, if you have trouble accepting that Lot was righteous in the eyes of God is spite of his sins, then you who are saved first examine your own lives to see whether you within yourself could be righteous in the eyes of God. Because of the righteousness we have received from Jesus Christ, we have been made just.
Dr. H. A. Ironside used to tell a most amazing and fantastic story. It seems almost unblievable, but it is true.
# 17 _Dr. Ironside was visiting a sheep ranch in Texas years ago. He saw a little lamb that looked deformed. He said that, instead of having four legs, it looked like he had eight. He couldn't figure it out. Dr. Ironside said to the sheep rancher, "That is a funny-looking thing. It looks like a freak of nature. Can you explain that to me? The ranchman said, "This is a strange thing. When that little lamb was born, its mother died. Another ewe lamb gave birth to a little baby lamb, and the little baby died. So we had a little lamb without a mother and an ewe without a baby." He went on to explain: "We decided to take that little baby and give it to that mother. She would nurse it, and that woud make everything all right."
# 19 __He said, "We put that little orphan lamb in with that mother lamb. She butted it away and wanted no part of it. We went out there where the little dead lamb's body was, took off its skin and tied it aroud this little body. Its little legs now look like they hang down just with skin and the hoof. Then we put it back with the ewe. She loves it and has adopted it. She is raising it, and it is healthy, and it is hers."
# 20 _What a picture! God could not tolerate one of us tonight without the righteousness imputed to us from the Son of God. Every Christian has had a covering for his sins. Atonement in the Old Testament means "a covering over," a looking forward to the coming of Jesus when He died to take away our sins. That leads me to this wonderful Bible truth: God looks upon a Christian__upon me and every other believer__as if we had never sinned one time.
# 21 _A wonderful statement is 1 John 4:17: "Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world." Jesus is righteous; and "as he is, so are we" because we are in Him. His righteousness is placed to our account in Heaven.
# 22 _That literally teaches that, as He is, so are we. When God looks upon me, He sees Jesus. When God looks upon me, He sees me as righteous. When God looks upon me, He sees me as just. Why? Because of the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
# 23 _When Jesus stood before Pilate, recorded in chapter 27 of the book of Matthew, Pilate got a note from his wife, which said, "Have nothing to do with that just man." After awhile Pilate washed his hands and said, "You see to it. I will have nothing to do with the innocent blood of this just man." Jesus was just in the eyes of God. And God the Father, through the salvation plan, has made you and me as Jesus in His sight.
# 24 _The hardest truth to get a Christian to see is the truth of justification. A lot of people have a problem with it. They thing justification takes place within you, but it doesn't. Regeneration, or the new birth, is a miracle of grace that God performs within me, but justification is not within me, but within the mind of God.
# 25 _Yonder on His throne God declares righteous everyone whom He sees in Jesus Christ__the just. If you are saved, thank God that the past is all gone and you now stand in the eyes of God as clean as if you had never sinned.
# 26 _My wife was reading the obituary. A lady 92 years of age had recently died in a little town where we had our first church more than twenty years ago. What a sweet lady she was__72 years of age then, and a widow. I will never forget this dear lady and two others. All three have gone to be with Jesus. A lady was saved in our church who had not lived a good life. (And I don't know anyone who has, do you? Looking down your nose at other people and talking about their past is bad business.) This lady got saved and wanted to join the church. These three sweet widows__God bless them__came to me, and that one whose obituary Mrs. Malone had read said, "Brother Tom, this lady gas a past! I don't think she should be taken into our church."
# 27 _God bless her! She was as sweet as any Christian who ever walked on the earth. But I looked at her and said, Mrs.___, so do you, and you, and you__and so do I." Those three sweet widows, who had lived in that old country town where you would have to look for something bad to do with a spy glass, a little bitty hick country town, looked at me as though I were the meanest man that ever lived! I continued: "All of us have a past. That dear lady who has just been saved has had all her sins blotted out just like yours were and yours and yours and mine; and we are going to take her into the church." And we did! When one gets saved, everything is fixed up right then__and fixed up forever. When you are justified in the eyes of God, you are as clean as if you had never sinned. "As he is, so are we." God looks upon us and sees us in Christ Jesus.
# 28 _"Shall Live" _The second time this text is found is in Galatians 3:11. The same six words__"the just shall live by faith." You have already heard that the theme of the book of Galatians is faith. A distinction is made between trying to be saved by keeping the law of God's Book and believing in Jesus Christ. That is true in a sense, but the whole burden of the book of Galatians is about how we have life in the Lord. So, actually, this verse in Galatians, "The just shall live by faith," gives prominence to the emphasis in that book which is put on those two words: "The just SHALL LIVE by faith."
# 29 _It seems that a key verse in the book is Galatians 2:20: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."
"Life" or "live" is mentioned five times in this one verse. The book is teaching us what we are not justified by the keeping of the law, neither are we made perfect or righteous by the law. We are justified and have eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. The law sentenced sinful man to eternal death, but Christ gives to the believer eternal life. "The just SHALL LIVE by faith." That is where the emphasis is.
# 30 _The Bible teaches two wonderful thruths along this line. First, it clearly teaches that by sin man lost his relationship with God. That happened in the Garden of eden when Adam sinned. When God said, "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die, " that did not mean physical death. When you read, "The wages of sin is death," that is not physical. The best Christian in this house is going to die just like the worst sinner in this city. When God said, "Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die"; when the Bible says, "The wages of sin is death"; when Ezekiel says, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die," this means spiritual death, which is alienation, separation, being cut off, put away, separated eternally from a holy God. That is the "wages of sin."
# 31 _Now, how can one under such a curse and condemned and without life, Have life? Galatians tells us how. "The just SHALL LIVE by faith." Thank God for life tonight in Jesus! I really believe that one just begins to live when he gets saved. We hear, "Life begins when Jesus comes in. Life really began for me twenty-five years ago when I received life from Jesus Christ.
# 32 _I am amazed how much Jesus talks about the spiritual life He gives to those who trust Him. For instance, John 10:10 says, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might hive it more abundantly." Jesus said to two brokenhearted sisters of Lazarus when He met them coming from the grave, "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die" (JOHN 11:25,26).
# 33 _Jesus gives eternal life. "The just Shall Live. . . ." It means we are going to live forever with God in Heaven. Jesus spoke so often about life in Him. Eternal life is not found in religion or good works or creeds or catechisms, but in the Lord Jesus Christ.
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."__John 3:16.
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my work, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life."__John 5:24.
# 34 __Eternal life is yours by believing in Jesus Christ. In chapter 6 of the book of John, He said, 'I am the bread of God come down from heaven that you might have life.' In chapter 14 He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." All three of these things man lost in the Garden. He lost the life. Jesus said, "I am life." If you don't have life, you are dead! You have never started to live until you get saved. I don't mean get religion, either; I mean get saved.
# 35 __Most everybody you ask in this day and time, whether they are Christians or not, will say, "Yes, I'm a Christian." Don't let them off with that, for sometimes they mean, "Yes, I learned the catechism"; or, "Yes, I've joined the church." I made a covenant with God a few days ago that I was going to ask somebody every day, "Are you a Christian?" One man said, "I don't know." Everyone else I have asked lately has said, "Yes, I'm a Christian." But the more I talk, the more I knew they didn't know what I was talking about.
# 36 _Mrs. Malone and I parked the car the other day down at the parking lot. She got out and went ahead while I paid the attendant. When I asked him, "Are you a Christian?" he nearly fell! He said, "I used to be a Christian." First, he had been discussing the weather, but I wasn't interested in the weather. There will be weather tomorrow like there is today. But he was so friendly while we were talking about the weather. That was very important to him. Then when I asked, "Are you a Christian?" did he get busy! I couldn't catch him going around the car. But he did say, "Yes, I used to go to church."
# 37 - He was not saved. I have seen peope in this church that, when someone went to them and asked, "Are you a Christian, when asked that, will ever become indignant. If one has life in Christ, he doesn't get mad when some concerned person asks, "Are you a Christian?" When you get life, others will know it. Don't you think I know whether I am alive or dead? "The just SHALL LIVE ..."; and you only begin to live when you have Jesus in your heart.
# 38 - I keep thinking of a couple who came forward in this church who had visited here some years ago. One Sunday morning while others were coming, this man came to be saved, and his wife was a few steps behind him. Someone went immediately with him into the prayer room. His Christian wife tarried and said, "He has spent $6,000 in recent months trying to find peace from a guilty conscience. O Brother Tom, today God has done in a moment what $6,000 couldn't do in months!" He got life! It is real living when you know Jesus. I really enjoy being a Christian, reading the Bible and preaching. I have been living twenty-five years. And every now and then it grips my soul that I am going to live forever! They broke into the news today announcing that Russia had sent a missile to Venus someday because I have eternal life.
"The just shall live by faith"
# 39 - "BY FAITH" - The third time that wonderful truth, "The just shall live by faith," but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him." Actually Hebrews 10:38,39 introduces the great "faith" chapter__Hebrews 11__where the word faith is found no less than twenty-four times. It appears that, in this use of the statement, "The just shall live by faith," the emphasis is on the two words, "by faith" Every person, from Abel, who "by faith offered a more excellent sacrifice," to the very last person to get saved, is saved by faith. There is no other way. Jesus said to the sinful woman who came to Him in the Pharisee's house, "Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace." That is so simple that it is hard to get people to see it. That is the thing people stumble over. That is the reason I said to a man last Sunday in this church something that I have not said to many people since I have been preaching: "I believe, because of your faith, you are a Christian, whether you believe it or not." He said that he couldn't see it, and he wasn't sure that he understood it; but everything else he agreed with, accepted and believed.
# 40 - It is by faith. Ninety-nine times in the Gospel of John alone we have the words, believe, believed or believing. Ninety-nine times, wouldn't you get to believing it? Ninety-nine times in one book God says one cannot be saved without faith, without believing in the person and work of the Son of God on the cross.
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