The passage this message was preached from, in full, with every other passage it reached for.
Philippians 4:6-7opening reading: don't worry about anything, pray about everything, tell God what you need, and the peace of God will guard your hearts
6 In nothing be anxious, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.
Jesus says He is the light of the world and those who follow Him will not walk in darkness
12 Again, therefore, Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.”
a single day in God's courts is better than a thousand elsewhere
10 For a day in your courts is better than a thousand. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.
6 For we have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteousness is like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
Paul argues that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness
1 Foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you not to obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly portrayed among you as crucified?
2 I just want to learn this from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing of faith?
3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now completed in the flesh?
4 Did you suffer so many things in vain, if it is indeed in vain?
5 He therefore who supplies the Spirit to you, and does miracles among you, does he do it by the works of the law, or by hearing of faith?
6 Even as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.”
7 Know therefore that those who are of faith, the same are children of Abraham.
8 The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the Good News beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you all the nations will be blessed.”
9 So then, those who are of faith are blessed with the faithful Abraham.
10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse. For it is written, “Cursed is everyone who doesn’t continue in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them.”
11 Now that no man is justified by the law before God is evident, for, “The righteous will live by faith.”
12 The law is not of faith, but, “The man who does them will live by them.”
13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree,”
14 that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Christ Jesus; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
15 Brothers, speaking of human terms, though it is only a man’s covenant, yet when it has been confirmed, no one makes it void, or adds to it.
16 Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his offspring. He doesn’t say, “To descendants”, as of many, but as of one, “To your offspring”, which is Christ.
17 Now I say this: A covenant confirmed beforehand by God in Christ, the law, which came four hundred thirty years after, does not annul, so as to make the promise of no effect.
18 For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no more of promise; but God has granted it to Abraham by promise.
19 Then why is there the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise has been made. It was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator.
20 Now a mediator is not between one, but God is one.
21 Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could make alive, most certainly righteousness would have been of the law.
22 But the Scriptures imprisoned all things under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
23 But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, confined for the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
24 So that the law has become our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.
26 For you are all children of God, through faith in Christ Jesus.
27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
29 If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring and heirs according to promise.
Paul argues that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness
1 What then will we say that Abraham, our forefather, has found according to the flesh?
2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not toward God.
3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”
4 Now to him who works, the reward is not counted as grace, but as something owed.
5 But to him who doesn’t work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.
6 Even as David also pronounces blessing on the man to whom God counts righteousness apart from works,
7 “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered.
8 Blessed is the man whom the Lord will by no means charge with sin.”
9 Is this blessing then pronounced on the circumcised, or on the uncircumcised also? For we say that faith was accounted to Abraham for righteousness.
10 How then was it counted? When he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision.
11 He received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while he was in uncircumcision, that he might be the father of all those who believe, though they might be in uncircumcision, that righteousness might also be accounted to them.
12 He is the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had in uncircumcision.
13 For the promise to Abraham and to his offspring that he should be heir of the world wasn’t through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.
14 For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void, and the promise is made of no effect.
15 For the law produces wrath, for where there is no law, neither is there disobedience.
16 For this cause it is of faith, that it may be according to grace, to the end that the promise may be sure to all the offspring, not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.
17 As it is written, “I have made you a father of many nations.” This is in the presence of him whom he believed: God, who gives life to the dead, and calls the things that are not, as though they were.
18 Besides hope, Abraham in hope believed, to the end that he might become a father of many nations, according to that which had been spoken, “So will your offspring be.”
19 Without being weakened in faith, he didn’t consider his own body, already having been worn out, (he being about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb.
20 Yet, looking to the promise of God, he didn’t waver through unbelief, but grew strong through faith, giving glory to God,
21 and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was also able to perform.
22 Therefore it also was “credited to him for righteousness.”
23 Now it was not written that it was accounted to him for his sake alone,
24 but for our sake also, to whom it will be accounted, who believe in him who raised Jesus, our Lord, from the dead,
25 who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.
scripture was fulfilled: Abraham believed God, it was credited to him as righteousness, and he was called a friend of God
23 and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him as righteousness”; and he was called the friend of God.
The message in order, in a few minutes of reading.
Pastor Ray opened in Habakkuk 2:4, a verse he first preached in seminary and has been studying ever since. Working slowly through one short phrase, he showed how it holds together two things that sound like they might pull apart: the faith we place in God, and the faithfulness God has already shown us.
What was said
The sermon picked up where the previous week left off, in the second cycle of God's reply to Habakkuk. Habakkuk had complained that God seemed idle in the face of senseless violence. God answered that He was already at work, raising up the Babylonians as an instrument of judgment, and then spoke the phrase at the center of the sermon: "the righteous shall live by his faith."
Pastor Ray worked through a shelf of English translations, from the NASB to the Message to Young's Literal, to show that translators keep arriving at the same fork: does the key word mean faith or faithfulness? Some render it one way, some the other, and at least one amplified version simply puts both. That repetition across translations, he argued, is not sloppiness. It is the word doing something intentional.
The Hebrew and Greek word at the center of the phrase, pistis, carries both meanings at once. On one side it points to the trust and confidence a person places in God. On the other it points to the reliability and fidelity of the One being trusted. Pastor Ray's point was that pulling those two meanings apart does damage to the phrase. They belong together.
He then moved through each piece of the phrase in turn. "The righteous" is not a self-generated condition. Drawing on Paul in Galatians and Romans, and on James, he showed that righteousness here is derived and imputed, just as Abraham's belief was credited to him as righteousness. "Shall live" carries a double weight as well: the verb describes both daily life in God here and now, and the eternal life that awaits at judgment.
"By faith" sits in the middle of the phrase in both Hebrew and Greek, and that position is the point. It grammatically modifies both "the righteous" and "shall live." You are declared righteous through faith placed in a faithful God, and you walk out that righteousness, day by day, through that same faith. The two directions of the phrase are not competing readings. They are both true at the same time.
To land this, Pastor Ray reached for M. C. Escher's drawing of two hands, each drawing the other. A translator normally wants one clean answer, he said, but God, as the intelligent designer behind the language itself, has made the phrase work both ways on purpose. The faith of the person and the faithfulness of God share the same source outside themselves.
He closed by bringing Ephesians 2:8-10 in as a benediction, letting it speak to both sides of the equation together: saved by grace through faith, not from ourselves, and created in Christ Jesus for good works prepared in advance. The righteous, declared so by God, live out that declaration by faith, on the way to the day when faith becomes sight.
Doing a Bible study?
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Pastor Ray prayed that God's faithfulness is what 'inspires and brings about faith, period.' What does it mean to you that faith itself is something God produces in us rather than something we manufacture on our own?
Habakkuk complained that God was sitting idly by while senseless violence raged, and God answered that He was already at work in ways Habakkuk would not even believe. Where in your own life has it been hardest to trust that God is doing something even when you cannot see it?
Speaker 2Hey. Good morning, everybody. How how are we doing? I'm glad to see you. I'm really glad to see you.
And I I've got a good word from, Philippians for us to to lead us into worship. It says, don't worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything. I don't know if if you need to hear that. I certainly do.
It says, tell God what you need and thank him for all that he has done. God, that we would be thankful for everything that you've done. Amen. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. God, we pray and we ask for that peace that transcends understanding.
It goes beyond what we could understand that you'd give us your peace this morning as we worship you in Jesus' name. Amen. Would you join me in song? We can stand together.
Speaker 1Amen. I've got a few announcements. Y'all can have a seat. We've have no Monday night tomorrow night. It's Memorial Day.
Please spend some time with your family and remember those fallen soldiers in service. We do have a need for some sound booth volunteers for both Sunday mornings but also Monday nights. If you feel like you have a particular technical gifting, let us know. We'd love to help out. I would love for you to help out with us, and we'd love to help you find where the place is you need to serve.
So that's sound booth volunteers needed. There's a prayer group that meets on Wednesday mornings at 07:30AM in the church office. That's a great time to get together, pray for missionaries, and for other things that are going on in the life of the church and probably your families whoever shows up. We're praying for the folks that they mentioned. So, we just pray through it.
Instead of it being like we share all the stuff in the beginning and then repeat it all in a prayer. We just pray together and get through. It's a really good time. The Bible reading plan. So first be in the Bible.
We're in Romans right now. I had my Romans four was my thing earlier in the week, and it's a blessing to receive those. It's a blessing to write those too. If you would, if you feel like, you know what? I read these every day, and it kinda is intriguing, feels like something I ought to do.
Let us know. Brad, would you stand up and just wait for a That's the editor of this thing. You can blame him. No, sorry. He's an instigator on this a bit too.
Yeah. But if you will talk to me or talk to Brad, I just want you to see his face and know who he is. If you'll talk to either one of us, we can get you signed up to be one of those people who does the blurb each morning. It's real encouragement. Like I said, either just receiving it and reading it or writing it is really good too because you to dig in it to do that.
Thank you, Brad for doing it and thank anybody else who will do that. Christmas in July is the theme of Vacation Bible School this year for June 27 through July 1. It's 9AM to noon. So if you would, up at First Speed Jackson. You can sign up kids there, you can also volunteer if you would like.
Let us know and we will get you signed on. Is there anything else? Blake, that's it. Is there anything I'm forgetting? I feel like there's an announcement I'm missing.
No? Alright. Welcome. Glad you all are here. Would you stand with us and we'll sing through Chain Breaker.
Speaker 2There are so many great verses in scripture that that say just that, but in a verse. Can I share one with you? It's Jesus in John eight twelve. He said, I'm the light of the world, and if you follow me, you don't have to walk in darkness. Isn't that such good news for us, church?
We don't have to walk in darkness because we'll have the light that leads to life. We've got Jesus. He truly is a pain taker, a way maker. Amen. He gives light in the darkness.
Let's keep singing. From Psalm 84, it says, a single day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. God, we thank you for your presence. You are with us, but would you, Lord, give us an awareness of your presence this morning? Amen.
There's nothing worth more than will ever come close. This thing spirit you are welcome Holy Spirit, we truly do invite you here to be with us, to be among us, to lead us, guide us, teach us, counsel us, convict and convince. Do your good work in us. You can have a seat here for a moment.
Speaker 1We're gonna
Speaker 2I'm gonna so worship through giving part of this service. I'll invite the ushers to come on forward, and we're gonna sing a song. Sing a song. And it's Psalm 92. And what it says is, it's good to give thanks to the Lord.
And if you agree, I'd love for you to sing this with us. To sing praises to the most high, to proclaim his unfailing love in the morning and his faithfulness. Before we sing, Ray, would you pray too?
Speaker 1Sure. God almighty, we are thankful for your faithfulness, Lord. We've been singing about it. We're gonna keep on singing about it. But your faithfulness, Lord, is what inspires and brings about faith, period.
It is your doing. Faith is your doing, Lord. Your faithfulness, your steadfastness, your continuance, the way that you are the same yesterday, today, and forever, Lord, that you are. Lord, it's it's mind boggling. It's overwhelming if we take it in, and it inspires faith in us.
Lord, I pray that we would be walking out the faith. We we walk out the faith that we would be ready to give a defense for the faith, that we would be ready to give a defense for the hope that is in us. In Jesus' name, Lord, we ask that you would increase our trust in you. We saw last week in Habakkuk, and we'll see again today right there, Lord, that really does start from a place of knowing that you are good and you are merciful and you are loving and you are kind. And in this week where we've heard news of just heinous and horrible things, Lord, We've heard all kinds of accusations and ugliness, maybe personally, definitely as about the body of Christ.
So Lord God Almighty, I pray that you would, Lord, inspire within us the actual faith, not some twisted version of it. Lord, I pray that everything else would fall away, that in your spirit, Lord, we would begin to see who it is that you really are, that your mercy and your grace and your loving kindness and the simplicity of walking that out, like you did. Lord, may we follow after Christ in all truth. In Jesus' name, Lord, I ask you to take of these offerings that we make and that you would advance the actual gospel, the good news of the kingdom. We pray, Lord, we know that you are sovereign, but we pray that we would be willing subjects and obedient servants to your sovereign command.
In Jesus' name, amen. And it's time downstairs for Children's Church. Uh-oh. We'll figure that out later. Maybe we'll figure that out now.
The wheels are coming off the wagon already this morning. How are you all? How's everybody? Are you okay? Good.
Last week so you all know normally what we do is we go through we've been in a New Testament study for nine and a half years. Just going forward, a little at a time in the order the books were written and it's funny because when I was in seminary, I had, this is what we're going to talk about today. In seminary, I had a class called homolytics 6,300. So it's a 6,000 level class. It's one that you had to have a whole lot of stuff before you could take that.
I put it off as long as I possibly could. I had a feeling. I had already been an intern here for one summer and another summer before I thought, I got to take a preaching course. This is the preaching course. And it was nine people in a room with a professor who'd been teaching and preaching for fifty plus years.
And I was scared to death. I hate standing in front of people. I mean, quite honestly, I couldn't think of anything more terrifying. But they're seminary students. They're my cohort.
They're the people I've been in school with the whole time. Super smart folks for the most. Yeah, most of them were anyway. There are nine of them in that class. The professor, when you had to preach, he would give everybody else in the audience, I guess, the class.
He'd give them a blue sheet of paper and it had on the blue sheet of paper, introduction zero through 10. Judge them. Oh my goodness. Preaching in seminary is the worst, by the way. Everybody is a student.
Everybody knows all of this stuff. It's not comfortable to preach in front of a professor anyway. It's not an easy thing. So homilead at 6,300, I put off as long as I possibly could. But when I took it, I did my first two sermons in there.
We had to do three sermons in front of everybody. My first two were New Testament, and I had one guy in the class that challenged me that you don't ever preach from the Old Testament. I said, I hadn't preached but twice in my life. You know? And so I said, alright.
I'll I'll look for something. You know? And what I came up with was Habakkuk two four, and I love it. I love it. I was, or am still, an intuitive feeler in a roomful at that time of very much thinkers.
And the professor would give us a section sometimes and say, come up with a three point sermon and a prayer for this. And in fifteen minutes, they could do that. I can't do that. I still can't do that. I mean, I might have a backlog of something I remember that I've done.
But anyway, we're gonna go through this. I want you to go with me. We're gonna pick this apart. Usually, I do a passage that's long enough to be encouraging by the time we get to the end of it. Sometimes that takes a while.
Last week, I did the whole book of Habakkuk's dialogue with God and there were two cycles of Habakkuk speaks and then God speaks. Habakkuk speaks then God speaks. And then something about God speaking to Habakkuk that second time made a shift in his thinking, and I hope it'll make a shift in our thinking, my my thinking, and your thinking. So, we're gonna go there and maybe we can close with a hymn of praise just like he did. But the second cycle of God speaking back to him starts like this.
So, Habakkuk, first of all, if you remember, he says, Lord, we are surrounded by senseless violence and you sit idly and do nothing. Now, this week, did any of you all have that prayer? Yeah. If we're honest and we're paying attention, we would have that prayer quite a bit. So the Lord said, I am doing something.
If I told you about it, you wouldn't even know. You wouldn't even believe me if I told you what I'm doing. Here it is. I'm raising up the Babylonians. They're gonna come in and they're gonna whip you all and they're gonna take you away in exile.
That's rough. So he he comes out and says, what? The Babylonians? They're worse than we are. But God answers back to him and he says this, the Lord answered me and this is what God says.
So this is God speaking. Write down this vision, Habakkuk. Make it plain on tablets so that he may run who reads it. So he may repent who reads it. So he may turn.
He may run who reads it. For still this vision awaits its appointed time. It is coming. It hastens towards its end and it will not lie if it seems slow, wait for it. It will surely come and it will not delay.
You know that God knows the end from the beginning. He knows what's coming and he says our own limited human understanding. We're not going to get everything. But he can be trusted. He is trustworthy and we should trust him no matter what.
It goes straight from that to this. Now this is God speaking and I think that's important to remember. God is speaking. He says, behold his soul. He's speaking I think of the Babylonians or the enemies at this point.
But behold his soul is puffed up. It is not right within him but the righteous shall live by his faith. That's Habakkuk two four. Now, that is Old Testament. It's picked up three different places in the New Testament, and so I want to draw some of that in too, but I really want to concentrate on the second part, the second the last phrase of that.
Now, I'm gonna give you a whole bunch of American, or modern English translations right here. But remember that God is talking, and we're just gonna look through a whole kind of a sampling of them. So the New American Standard, which is what I normally use. I didn't use it last week. I used ESV.
The reason I didn't use it is because of the word impudent. Impudent. Isn't that just a word? Like does anybody in here, when you came in here today, if I asked you to define impudent, would you have said, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Some of us, yes.
I can see a few of you. Impudent. It just seems so I don't know. So I changed to ESB. But NASB, behold as for the impudent one, the one who rises himself up in pride, His soul's not right within him.
Humility before God is the only thing. Right? It's the the main thing. It comes back over and over and over again. But the impudent one, his soul's not right within there, but the righteous one will live by faith.
It's contrasted. Impudence is contrasted with righteousness. The enemy, this is NIV. The enemy is puffed up. Now that enemy, they kind invented that.
That does not say enemy anywhere around there, but it's a dynamic translation. So the enemy is puffed up. His desires are not upright but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness. Now the first one said faith and the second one says faithfulness. Which one is it?
Let's talk about that. Pistis is the word for that. KJV, good old translation. Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him. It's puffed up, but the just shall live by his faith.
New King James, but behold the proud. That's a good translation too. His soul is not upright in him, but the just shall live by his faith. Look at the proud. The New Living translation, very much a dynamic translation.
Look at the proud. They trust in themselves and their lives are crooked. Why? Because their soul is not right within them. But the righteous will live by their faithfulness to God.
So it's faith or faithfulness everywhere we look. The New Revised Standard Version. Look at the proud. Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith. Okay.
Look, his ego is inflated. That is the Holman Christian Standard Bible. Look, his ego is inflated. He is without integrity. But the righteous one will live by his faith.
The message. Oh, Eugene Peterson. What a pastor. What a great pastor. It's it's amplified a bit, but listen.
Look at that man. Look at that guy. He's bloated by self importance. He's full of himself, but his soul empty. But the person in right standing before God through loyal and steady believing, the righteous, is fully alive, really alive.
That's the message. It's beyond translation. It's a paraphrase. He doesn't even say it's a translation. But idea for idea, it goes with a really, really alive.
Oh, the Amplified Bible. It admits it in the title. It's amplifying. Amplified classic version right here. Look at the proud.
His soul is not straight or right within him. It's crooked. It's not right. But the rigidly just and uncompromisingly righteous man shall live by his faith and in his faithfulness. This includes both.
Okay. But it is amplified. Admits it. And then we get down to the very last, the Young's Living of the Young's Literal Translation. It's an old, old translation, but it is straight up in the word order exactly what it says, Lo, a presumptuous one.
That sounds impudent and proud, doesn't it? Lo, a presumptuous one, not upright is his soul within him and the righteous by his steadfastness liveth. So faithfulness and now in the Young's Literal, says steadfastness. Okay. Maybe he couldn't decide between faith or faithfulness and steadfastness goes with either.
The righteous shall live by faith. That's what we're going to study right here. So this is it in Hebrew. I would not even venture a guess at the pronunciation. This is because it's read from right to left.
But the righteous by his faith shall live. If you wanted to venture a guess, there it is. There's a Hebrew that just wants to yell it out because you spent all that money studying Hebrew. No. Nobody.
See, that's the difference in preaching in church and preaching in seminary right there. It's restated in Greek in the New Testament and there it is, Had deityaios That is Romans one seventeen, Galatians three eleven, and Hebrews ten thirty eight respectively. That's what those versions say. And here it is. The day and there's a post positive conjunction.
It's just in there. It's the but or the and at the beginning of the sentence. So they all say the same, but the righteous by faith shall live. Second one is the righteous by faith shall live. And the third one is but my righteous one.
That one is in Hebrews. That one's in Hebrews. And it's just clarifying. My righteous one by faith shall live. God is saying there's there's some ownership there.
Now if we are to be righteous, it is gonna have to be a derived righteousness because self righteousness is not righteousness. So the more I study this simple phrase, the more profound it became. And I've still been studying it since then, and it keeps on being that way. So I was an art major way back, you all know that. And like I said, I'm an intuitive feeler in a room full of thinkers.
And the more I thought about it, the more profound it became. And I just kept on coming back to a few things. I'm gonna break it down. I'll start with the righteous. It serves as the subject of this phrase, the righteous or the righteous one.
You can provide the one in there, but the righteous one. It is, in this case, singular. The righteous. It has to do with uprightness. We saw in all those translations it said the soul is not upright within them.
Something's wrong with what's going on. And it's pride is what's going on. The impudent one is what it's contrasted with. God resists the proud but he gives grace to the humble. The righteous one shall live by his faith.
It has to do with uprightness and being right before God. So if you're listening to that and you go, well, there's no one righteous. No, not one. Yeah. Skeptics might say that because in Psalms it says, there is no one righteous, not even one.
And in Isaiah, says, Lord, there is no one that is found to be righteous. And Paul repeats both of those. There's no one righteous. No, not one. Romans three twenty three.
We read it this week in the blurb. But Paul argues in Galatians three and in Romans four that just as Abraham believed God, just as he trusted God, believed God, it was credited to him as righteousness. It is a derived righteousness. It is imputed to his account because he had the audacity to believe God. Leave the place that you know and go to a place I'll show you and it says Abraham believed God.
It was counted to him as righteousness. We don't have any righteousness of our own. We have to draw it from somewhere. Romans four three, what does scripture say? Thank you Paul for reminding us.
Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. So the righteous or the righteous one in this phrase is what? Let's see James. James agrees with Paul. And scripture was fulfilled which says, And Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.
And he was called a friend of God. You can be a friend of God by humbly accepting the truth of his faithfulness. You can place your faith in his faithfulness. Now we'll get to that. That's leading leading the witness here.
We'll let the scripture say it. It's coming next. First John says, Little children, make sure no one deceives you. The one who practices righteousness is righteous. Just as God is righteous.
It's derived. It's derived from Him. But it is possible as humans on earth to actually practice righteousness. But it is derived from God. It has to be.
So shall live. Next one. The righteous shall live. So this serves as a verb of the phrase. Righteous shall live.
It is in the future tense. It's future imperfect tense. It's that usually signifies an action that extends forward from a certain point. This happened and then from there forward, it makes a difference. Does that make sense to you?
It is a continuous action from a certain point all the way into the future. Are you with me? I'm sounding like a feeler right now or I'm sounding like a thinker right now. Y'all tell me. Are you with me?
Okay. So it also can mean shall live also means, okay, there is an eventual judgment and there are gonna be two groups of people. Some of those will live eternally. Some of those will die eternally. Does that make sense?
Shall live is an eschatological security in this eventual judgment that is coming. Now when he's sharing it with Habakkuk, it was a judgment in the form of Babylonian conquerors coming in and taking them back in exile. But when you use it in Galatians and Romans and Ephesians and you're thinking about this, it's certainly looking forward to that eventual judgment. Shall live also, instead of just being live versus die, live and exist, the verb really goes with someone who is thriving and enjoying life in God. It's abundant life.
Okay? So the shall live, that's what it means, by faith. But this is where it gets interesting. This to me is where this gets interesting. By faith.
It's right in the middle of those two, and it can go with either one of them. Okay? The righteous by faith shall live. In both Hebrew and Greek, it's in the middle and it modifies. But it can modify it's probably, it seems like it might modify one, but it also can modify the other depending on where you look at it, which place in scripture.
So the righteous by faith shall live or the righteous by faith shall live. That seems like a little distinction, but hold on to it. It's that way in all three of these languages. So pistis means both faith and faithfulness. And this is an argument in seminary like you wouldn't believe whether pistis is subjective or objective.
Subjective means it's faith. It's what we put our faith in. And then objective means it's faithfulness. The faithfulness of God or the faithfulness of Christ. The faithfulness of the one in whom trust is being placed.
Okay. Y'all look just complete y'all need to stretch or something? Am I boring you silly? This is why I did long passages instead of short passages. It it behooves us to study this stuff a little deeper.
Faith and faithfulness. I don't know I don't follow sports hardly at all. But I know there's always jokes about the Cleveland Browns, right? You can keep on believing in the Cleveland Browns. I could have used the Falcons, but I heard they were doing all right.
So you can keep on believing in something, but if they are not what you believe them to be, is your faith any good? Does that make sense? So you can put your faith in possessions, earthly possessions. You can put your faith in your bank account. But we've seen that evaporate over time, have we not?
We can put our faith in people, and we'll see that Not just evaporate. Sometimes that goes just like that. Putting your faith in something that is faithful, that makes all the difference. So faith, belief, trust, confidence on the one side and fidelity and faithfulness on the other. Subjective or it's objective.
So PISTAs can be either. And often when translating that, you come up against it and you saw one of the guys said, Faith and faithfulness. Just put them both in there because they're both true. I think that's alright. Okay.
Typically when you're translating, you want one answer. That's that's the way to go. You don't want to leave room for. But this is God speaking. This is God speaking.
And he separated the languages. He works through the medium of language, human language. He communicates his ideas through propositional truth of the word, and he communicates through language. So think about it. It is both faith and faithfulness.
Now we see in Hebrews 11, it says, now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen. That's good. That's good. I like it. It's a bumper sticker verse and it's like when I don't know what's gonna go on, I can't say, you know what?
I have faith that God loves me and he cares. And no matter, come what may, I trust the Lord no matter what, like Habakkuk ends up doing after God says this to him, the righteous ones shall live by faith. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen. They will be seen, but they're just not seen yet. And the world will not listen to that as evidence.
If you're not seeing it, they can't point to it, they're not going to listen to it. Right? So what does it mean? What does it boil down to? So if you look at faith on the one side, it is that which evokes trust and faith.
Faithfulness. Objectively, this is what it is. That which evokes trust and faith. Do you all know, and I've said this a thousand times from up here, but do you know anything that works better than consistent application over time? No.
You can give a rousing message, evangelical, theologically true, holy, wonderful. You can give the most rousing message that dangles people people over hell and promises heaven and causes people to come into the kingdom of God, walk the aisle. But then if you go out and you do something that is reprehensible, that destroys instead of building up. Right? So that which evokes trust and faithfulness.
God is the same. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, continuous application over time. He has been faithful and he will be faithful. That which evokes trust and faith faithfulness, reliability, fidelity, commitment, especially in the case of deity. Okay?
Especially in the case of deity. That's where this word comes in, pistis. But the other way of looking at it is the state of believing on the basis of that reliability of the one trusted. It is trust. It is confidence.
It is faith. So are you with me on that too? Alright. How are we saved? It is by grace.
God's grace. We did not deserve it because we were not righteous. But by God's grace, through his faithfulness, pistis, or our faith. Yes. And that is not of ourselves.
It's the gift of God. God imparts faith. If you lack faith, ask God. He will give you more faith. Exercise your faith.
He'll grow it. It is the gift of God. Not of works lest anyone should boast. It's not anything that you've done. If you understand this stuff, it's because God has shown it to you.
So is the righteous one the one God declares to be righteous, or is he the one who does what is right? Yes. So does shall live mean daily in this life, every day walking out a life of righteousness, of trust in God and allowing him to show me the way and provide the resources for what he wants for me to do? Or is it shall live, pie in the sky, bye and bye, forever in the next, absolute incorruptible hope that we are all looking forward to? Which one of those?
Does shall live mean daily in this life or forever in the next? Yes, it does. And does pistis mean faith of man or the faithfulness of God? Yes. If you put your faith in anything other than God, It's worthless.
It's worthless. Now, you can pledge your faith and your spouse can pledge their faith back and that based on the love of God, we can love one another because, yeah, bring that into absolutely every sphere of your life, but allow your faith in a faithful God to drive the way that you act consistently over time. Consistent application over time is the only thing that works. So you can look at it this, like this. The righteous by faith.
We are declared to be righteous because we put our trust in God. The righteous by faith. We shall live. That's good. Saved.
Is he saved or is he not saved? You know, that's always a question, isn't it? The one who's righteous by faith shall live. That's it. And we saw someone come to Jesus this week.
It is so great to see someone come to Christ and just in humility be overwhelmed by the love of God, by the mercy of God, by the grace of God. Fantastic. The high point of the week for me. The righteous by faith, they shall live. But the righteous, the one who's been declared by righteous by God, they shall live by their faith.
They don't walk it out saying one thing and doing another. It's not hypocrisy. It's a recognition of one's own sin. It's a recognition of one's own shortcoming, but also a willingness to turn that over to God and have him draw you into the family and the center of his will. The righteous by faith shall live.
I mentioned I was an art major. So there are lots of different times that you all see me using little pieces of art here and there. Because I think of them and I'm kind of ADD and I just put them in there. But this one, I'm not a huge M. C.
Escher fan, but I like M. C. Escher. And this guy so what is this? Is this what's a drawing of?
It's a drawing of a left hand drawing a right hand. Or is it a drawing of a right hand drawing a left hand? Yes. It's an image of a right hand drawn on a left hand or a left hand drawn on a right hand. But it's an image of both of those things.
But consider this. All of those yeses we just stated there that it's either this or this. It's either this or this. And normally as translators, we want to nail it down. If you look at Galatians and Romans, you'll see this more about a justification passage that you have been declared to be righteous because you believe God.
But if you read in Hebrews or Habakkuk, you'll see this as a sanctification passage because it's about how you live your life in the here and now. And it's both. It's both of those things. So this right hand and left hand drawing, if you look at it, it's kind of a mindblower. There are all kinds of modern interpretations of this.
There are robots building robots, you know. But think about this, M. C. Escher drew that. There was an intelligent designer who considered all of this stuff, all the possibilities of what he could create, and he made it true both ways.
And God has done the same. The faith of man and the faithfulness of God, they're both originists with the outside intelligent designer creator. The righteousness of man, the declaration of you are now righteous. It's derived and it's foreign to us, but at the same time it transforms us into someone who can walk in righteousness. That's amazing.
And shall live. The abundant life starts now. Kingdom life starts now. To have God as your sovereign, willingly and humbly obedient before Him starts now. And then, yeah, incorruptible hope in forever, in heaven for sure.
But walking that direction, you can be walking out the very righteousness of God. Is that the last slide, Blake? Okay. Good. I think that's it.
Would you all stand up Considering this together, considering that Jesus is the author, maybe the artist, the author, the pioneer, the one who blazed the trail, and the finisher, perfecter of our faith. Considering that, he authored it before the foundation of the world and he'll finish it into eternity future. During that the meantime, between those two things though, he's given us an opportunity and a privilege to write part of that story by the way that we live out our lives. And how is it that we will live out our lives? Well, no matter what happens in the world, the righteous will live by their faith.
Speaker 2Amen.
Speaker 1Amen. And as a benediction today, we're going to concentrate again on both sides of this equation. It's Ephesians two eight through 10 talks about how it is that you were saved. If in fact you have been saved. It has been by the grace of God through his faithfulness to you and your trust in that faithfulness.
It is by grace that you've been saved through faith. It's not from yourselves. It's the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast. For we are actually God's handiwork, his poiema, his masterpiece, his workmanship. We are his created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
In Jesus name, Lord, may it be so that these righteous ones will be living out their faith on the way to the faith that we will see eventually at home in heaven with you in Jesus name.
