And good morning. If you take your copy of the scriptures with me once again, and we'll turn to Habakkuk chapter 2 this week, looking at verses 2 through 5 together. Habakkuk chapter 2, reading verses 2 through 5. And if you would follow with me as I read from the New King James translation of the scriptures. Then the Lord answered me and said, write the vision and make it plain on tables, that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it will speak and it will not lie, though it tarries, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry. Behold the proud. His soul is not upright in him, but the just shall live by faith. Indeed, because he transgresses by wine, he is a proud man, and he does not stay home. Because he enlarges his desire as hell, and he is like death and cannot be satisfied, he gathers to himself all nations and heaps up for himself all peoples. This is the word of the Lord, let's pray together. Thank you, Father, for your holy word, and we pray this morning that as we unravel and unwrap those words in the Old Testament that the just shall live by faith, that we see them unfold in our new covenant perspective as believers, Lord, and let us take hold of you by faith. Let us reach to you, Lord, and take hold of you and believe in you, and we trust that that will be true. Bless us as we continue in your word this morning, in the name of Christ, amen. We've been in the book of Habakkuk. I think this is the third or fourth week. It's a strange little book, seated in the back of the Old Testament. As we began, we realized that the prophet Habakkuk was bearing a burden. His burden is expressed very early on in the first chapter. He described his burden as his heart being broken because of how poorly his own people, who were the children of Judah, were acting. Now, Judah, that was remember the division that happened after King Solomon. Solomon, because of his idolatry and because of his sin, had the kingdom ripped away from him or at least ten of the tribes. They were called the Northern Kingdom and they became known as Israel and the Southern Kingdom was called Judah and it had a king who was of the lineage of David up to the point that the Chaldeans came or the Babylonians came and conquered and pillaged them. Now initially Habakkuk is crying out because he's seeing how destitute his own people are acting even though they have the words of the Lord. So he cries out to the Lord and the Lord gives him an initial response and the response was not quite to his liking. early on in Chapter 1 after his first cry to God, God responds and says, I'm going to be sending the Chaldeans. They're going to be making their way and they're going to be my instrument of judgment on Judah. And as it was working, they were pillaging and coming all the way up. If you could just picture a map, the Arabian Desert here and you've got the Babylonians as they come up and they come over and they, one step at a time, they're conquering the Assyrians who had conquered the northern tribes, Israel. And the Assyrians are running from them. And eventually, Egypt will no longer come up and this little place, Judah, is right in the way. And the Lord is going to use something that, at first glance, it seems to be that they're more evil, they're more wicked than are the people of Judah. Last week, we wrestled with Habakkuk as he struggled with God, asking questions that we probably have asked ourselves, in belief, in full belief. Remember, that it's okay to struggle with the Lord. Somebody might say, you should never question the Lord. Well, that's not true. And we read some very distinct quotes of men of faith who said, you know what, we often struggle in our belief. I believe, help mine unbelief." And Habakkuk struggled with many perplexing questions as to how God was using evil, even though God is not the author of evil. He doesn't look upon it and approve of it, but yet he is still sovereign. He's still in control. Nothing is beyond his means, and he was able to do something for his glory and for the good of God's people. And we've asked questions like that in our life, haven't we? Where we do not understand something. How could this happen? This is a terrible thing. And yet, as the years roll on and we continue to walk in faith, we come to that point like Joseph. Remember he said, you meant it for evil, God meant it for good. God is able to work all things for his glory and good. There's a bigger picture happening here, and we're going to see that today. It's even bigger than the Chaldeans and Judah. It expands all the way into the gospel era, into the far-reaching future. The theme today is, of course, this vision that Habakkuk is having, and he'll be asked to record it. And condensed within it is that statement that lives on in the New Testament over and over again. Three times it's repeated in the New Testament, the just shall live by faith. Remember when we left last week, Habakkuk was waiting. He wrestled with God and he came to this point where he's waiting on the Lord, right? And we've been there before. We've come to the point where we don't have all the answers, but we're waiting on God. And oftentimes we come then further as we wait on the Lord, we find renewed strength. We mount up with wings as eagles, as Isaiah said. We can run without weariness. God restores the soul, refreshes us. So as we look at the text today, we see that God is asking Habakkuk to record a vision, and the vision is summarized in the statement, the just shall live by faith. And so we will be looking at these few verses surrounding this vision. Look at verse two. We read that the Lord answered me and said, write the vision and make it plain on tablets that he may run who reads it. This is kind of some weird phraseology. What does it mean? Write it out. I think we get that. Make it plain. We can talk about that in a minute. But so that somebody could run who reads it, it's a little bit odd. Well, what the Lord is saying is, he's saying, Habakkuk, I'm going to give you a vision when it comes. I want you to inscribe it on tablets. Wesley, in one of his commentaries, says, this was a public concern and therefore was published, written, and engraven upon tablets of smooth stone or wood, hung up in public as a place to read. so large, so conspicuous that somebody doesn't have to slow down to read it. It's like those big billboards on the highway, right? As you're driving 70, 80, hopefully not too much more than that, you're driving down the highway and you see those billboards, you can see them, they're evident, they're conspicuous. So Habakkuk is asked, he said, the Lord says, write the vision and make it plain. He's a messenger of the Lord. There's a lot that's been written just on this little text here about making God's message plain. Making it plain. First he had to see it and understand it. Habakkuk then had to make it known he was a preacher. God's word is to be made known as clearly as possible. And then he made it permanent. You know, all of us have some contribution to working with God's word. There are Christian educators within the church. There are Christian educators, basically everyone here, if you're a parent, you're an educator of Christ, all right? You're somehow teaching God's word to somebody else. And as we teach God's word, we have to make it clear to other people to the best we can. Spurgeon has a quote, he says, I have sometimes thought that certain ministers fancy that it was their duty to make the message elaborate, to go to the very bottom of the subject and stir up all the mud that they could find there, till you could not possibly see them, nor could they see their own way at all. They tell people all the difficulties they have discovered in the Bible, which difficulties most of the hearers would never have heard unless their ministers had told them. Sometimes I know our minds, you know, Preachers and teachers in the church, we're just normal people, right? We have this elaborate social media network that we're competing against, these professionals, but our goal, no matter what your objective is, if you're teaching in the church, if you're teaching Sunday school, if you're a secular teacher, right? If you're a coach, whatever, it's to make that thing clear, to make it plain as possible, not to obscure it. One little tip, well, actually, we'll borrow from a fellow by the name of John Milton Gregory who wrote The Seven Laws of Teaching. And he was a Baptist minister who also in his education side is one of the premier classical Christian advocates back in the early 1800s. He was actually superintendent of public education in Michigan before everything kind of went the very pragmatic way of, you know, just more of utilitarian education. You know, instead of training an individual to think, to be a moral citizen, education has kind of crumpled and turned to, It has a utilitarian purpose, and that's it. Let's produce some child that can just do a function in society, rather than becoming a moral person. This fellow, John Milton Gregory, wrote this famous book, it's been copied over and over again, called The Seven Laws of Teaching. The first law that he had was this. Know thoroughly and familiarly the lesson you wish to teach. In other words, teach from a full mind of clear understanding. If you don't know it, you can't teach it. If you ever teach a Sunday school class and you're sitting there and you don't know it or understand it, you're never gonna communicate it. I don't know if you've ever had a college class where the professor sat there reading from a textbook and didn't even understand it. I've had to sit through classes like that before and I'm like, why am I even here? Just to get the check from it. So when it comes to teaching or ministering the word of God, the first thing we have to do communicate to somebody else is to understand it. And then his second law was gain the attention and the interest of the pupils. Refuse to teach without attention. Have you ever tried doing that when you have a class of third and fourth graders? I was blessed to do a third and fourth grade math class one time. You don't start until everybody's looking at you, right? Sometimes you wait. But the third rule is very interesting. Use words understood by both the teacher and the pupil in the same sense. And there's a lot of different criteria and points that I think are well taken. Habakkuk had a ministry here. He was a prophet of the Lord. A prophet was one who gave the message of the word of God. He's given a task. Present it clearly. Make it public. There's a good lesson that we can learn from this. The job of a teacher isn't to make everybody think you're the smartest in the world. It's to present it clearly and let God do his work. All right? And Habakkuk, by the way, was a preacher and that's the job of a preacher as well. The job of a preacher is not to be the most witty. God can sound through a ram's horn or a silver trumpet. Did you know that? You may be the most eloquent person in the world and have absolutely zero of God's power and authority because you're not preaching his word. You may be a ram's horn and God can work through his word. All right? It's God's work. It's his work. So Habakkuk is given a task. He's going to wait and then he's going to write this vision out and he's going to put it up in a place that it can be seen. The vision of the prophet Habakkuk of the just shall live by faith was going to be fulfilled God had promised that as he's having him wait here in verse 3 we see the Lord says to him for the vision is yet for an appointed time but at the end of it it will speak it will not lie though it tarries wait for it because it will surely come it will not tarry it will happen all that the Lord has said is true and what he says will happen We can count on that. Remember last week Habakkuk went back as he was wrestling with God. What was the first thing he went back to? It was the Lord's everlastingness and his immutability that he does not change and so much of his unchangingness is linked to the fact that what he says is true and what he says will happen. And everything that was given as a prophetic word in the Old Testament came to be. And there are things that he gave in this text that are still coming to be. The prophecy which he speaks here is not just the near future which it will happen. The Chaldeans would come. They would be used as God's hand of judgment on Judah. Judah would be encouraged to have hope and faith as God would bring a remnant back from exile, and we know that from what Ezra and Nehemiah, Esther was in that exilic era, right? God brings a remnant back, always a remnant, in accordance to his election of grace, always. This is the way the Lord works. He works the same in this age. But beyond the immediate context of Habakkuk's prophecy, which was Judah and the Chaldeans, there's something far reaching and far greater something that is true for all the ages, all the way back and all the way forward. In the New Testament, these words are used and brought to their fulfillment and their ultimate conclusion. We find the fulfillment of Habakkuk's words in Christ. The just shall live by faith. It is found in the scriptures of Romans 117, In Galatians 3 in verse 11, and in Hebrews 10, 38. This is an oft-quoted passage. Remember early on as we were preaching through this, we said that this little verse here is the hub. It's like the, and from it the spokes of Habakkuk's, his contextual wheel flow outward. We'll see it fulfilled today. We're gonna spend most of our time in three passages in the New Testament. briefly looking at them. But there's even more to Habakkuk. Did you know that? Habakkuk has these even further reaching implications. There are certain aspects of his prophecy which are eschatological. They talk of an era where the whole world is embracing the knowledge of God. Far reaching, things that are yet to come or that are progressing through the kingdom of God in Christ Jesus even now. We'll see that as we progress, not today, but in the weeks to come. We see that the vision that the just shall live by faith displays a contrast between two ways. Look at verse 4. You see the contrast. He says, Behold the proud, his soul is not upright in him, but the just shall live by faith. Habakkuk throws everything that is not on the path of faith into the category of the proud. He describes it in verse five by individuals who transgress by wine, who do not stay at home because of their covetousness, and are never satisfied heaping for themselves people. He establishes this contrast between the prideful one and the person filled with faith. Pride becomes his symbolic sin, because it is the first sin, it is the root of all sin. Pride is that root. Habakkuk uses this mental image of a drunken carouser. If you've ever been around people who are intoxicated, the lid of their inhibitions are let off, and they usually say a lot of boastful and proud things. It just lets everything go, right? The Babylonians, by the way, were known for their carousing, their excessive drinking, their drunkenness. And of course, this is probably part of the illustration here. But it's bigger than just the Babylonians. It applies to all who are not in Christ or not of faith. Either one is in the pathway of righteousness or of unrighteousness. Habakkuk, he labels that path as the way of the pride. the prideful one, the proud. Spurgeon says this, he says, if there is a sin that is universal, it is this, it's pride. Where is it not to be found? Hunt among the highest and loftiest in the world and you'll find it there. And then go and search amongst the poorest and the most miserable and you'll find it there. There may be as much pride inside a beggar's rags as in a prince's robe, And a harlot may be as proud as a model of chastity is proud. Pride is a strange creature. It never objects to its lodgings. It will live continuously enough in a palace, and it will live equally at its ease in a hovel. Is there any man in whose heart pride does not lurk? Remember, he's using this as an illustration of the unrighteous. Very, very powerful, very poignant here. All, all man. So, in reality, the comparison and the contrast is not just with the Chaldeans here, it was Judah as well. There are those who were living by faith, and those who were living in pride and in sin. And that's the contrast that's given. Now as this vision unfolds, we realize in the New Covenant that we have an even clearer perspective of these words from Habakkuk. When Habakkuk says, the just shall live by faith, Paul launches his entire argument from the book of Romans with those words. It's profound. I want you to turn with me. We're gonna do a little turning today in the scriptures to three places. We started way back in the obscurity of the Old Testament. I want you to turn forward to the book of Romans, and look at chapter one with me. Romans chapter one. As we see Paul's theme, as he elucidates his theme for the book of Romans. You know, I think it was, maybe it was Tony the other night, you said that these epistles were meant to be read together. That's a good word, because Paul is writing an argument, and he's forming his thoughts. He's got this big idea, In verse 16 and 17 of Romans chapter 1, he prefaces his big picture. If you want to tune into what Paul was saying, you look at Romans 1 verses 16 and 17. Let me read those for you. Paul says this, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. For the Jew first and also for the Greek, and look at verse 17. It says, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, what does it say? The just shall live by faith. We've seen that before. Habakkuk 2, verse 4. All right? So Paul is launching his argument for justification by faith using Habakkuk's expression. It's not just Paul, it's the Holy Spirit. This is the word of the Lord. What does he mean here? Look at the verse, particularly verse 17. It says that the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. It starts with faith and it ends with faith. There's not an addition of works. We'll see that as we progress into Galatians. It's not that you were saved by faith, then that you kind of took over it on yourself. There's a lot of people that teach that. Did you know that? You say a word, a prayer, you walk an aisle, and then you live by your own strength. That is not the idea in the New Testament. That is not what's taught. Look it, there's another word, the righteousness. The righteousness of God is revealed. What does that mean? Different ideas, some think it's God's attribute of justice. That doesn't fit with the context. Some interpret it as God's goodness. But the compelling, overwhelming evidence points to that this righteousness of God refers to God's plan of something that we call justification. Now you might say, Jim, you're using big words. Listen, the scripture uses that word. We need to know what it means. It's not a matter of we're talking about something just to snow people. The scripture uses the term justification That's what the righteousness is being referred to here. It's really the same idea, the same word. So we need to know what it means. Having concluded here that the righteousness of God in Romans 117 is justification, this term emphasizes the treating of believers by God as righteous in light of Christ's obedience and sacrifice. When God justifies a sinner, he doesn't make them internally righteous. It's imputed to them. What does that mean? It's almost like he recharges their account. He credits them with it. It doesn't imply that people are innocent. It doesn't mean that God lessens the severity of their sin or that they partake in God's essential righteousness. It contrasts human attempts to gain righteousness, taking man's works out of the equation entirely. Now, Bible-believing Christians, the Protestant idea, the Reformers idea, was completely different than the historic Catholic position on justification. I remember this very clearly. You know, when we look back, I think of myself as a young man, and I squandered a lot of opportunities. I don't know if you've ever done that. You just think back. a young man that, my dad was a Baptist pastor for a period of our life, and he led this boy to the Lord, and he was a year older than me, and he was my friend, but I just really wasn't a great friend. You know, when you're young and you think, you're kind of self-absorbed, but he was still my friend, and he came over from, he was saved out of Catholicism, and he brought a track over from the Catholic Church on justification. And he said to me, how is this different than what your dad is teaching? And I was just young, I was, I don't really care about this, you know? So I didn't really dig into it. And I wish I had, I wish I had been more diligent, but I remember him asking that question, and this question has come up many times in my life. I've had many friends who are in a system that teaches justification, but they mean something totally different. The doctrine that we teach called the justification of Christ and his righteousness is different than the Catholic idea. And let me explain this. The biblical view is that justification involves God putting Christ's righteousness onto the believer. It's legal. It's a legal declaration. We'll talk about that in just a minute. In light of some recent things, it might help us to illustrate that. This is a place where God considers Christ's righteousness as belonging to the sinner, even though they are not inherently righteous. It is entirely external, and it doesn't involve or depend on an internal change. Now, there is a change that takes place, It's before that, it's called regeneration. Remember when the Lord said, you must be born again? When a person is born again, it's where God brings you to spiritual life. And then you respond by faith, and then you're justified, right? This is justification. The Catholic view of justification involves something called infused righteousness. Infused righteousness. This means that God imparts righteousness into the believer transforming them internally and making them inherently more holy. It includes sanctification as a part of justification. Sanctification is another thing that we talk about where God makes us into the image of Christ, but we have to distinguish and separate some of these ideas. When God justifies, it's by his work alone. It's not something that is incongruent with our works or incongruence or in synergy with our works. It has nothing to do with your work or my work. In fact, it is by faith and it is all of grace. All of grace. And that leads us to this fact that the biblical view says that faith alone is the means by which a person is justified. Justification is received, it does not rely on the believer's moral transformation or works, but on Christ's righteousness alone. The other view is that faith must be accompanied by baptism for initial justification and must adhere to theological or dogmatic truths defined by the church. Good works and cooperation with grace contribute to maintaining justification. This is the predominant view, by the way, globally, when it comes to those who often parade under the title Christian. Furthermore, the biblical view of justification says justification is a completed act. It provides a believer with full assurance of faith, of their standing before God. It is a legal thing. When Abraham believed God, we'll see in a minute, God credited it to him as righteousness. It wasn't a, it was a legal declaration. The Catholic view says justification is seen as a process. It means believers cannot have absolute assurance of being in a state of grace. Without special divine revelation, Catholics are left with only vague moral certainty rather than face That's a huge difference. Have you ever met somebody and you say, are you a believer? And they say, oh, I'm not quite sure. Maybe, maybe I'm kind of coming in and coming out of it. Okay. The fourth is that merits and works are not a part of the biblical view. Eternal life is entirely a gift of grace. It's not based on human merit. Good works are a result of salvation, not contributing to it. This infused view is that eternal life is both a gift of God's grace and a reward for good works. Justification can increase through the believer's cooperation with grace and the performance of meritorious acts. Finally, the interpretation is different. Justification is a distinct aspect of salvation from a biblical view. It's separate from regeneration, sanctification, and other elements of a Christian life. The other view says justification encompasses various aspects of the Christian life, including sanctification, spiritual growth, good works, blending biblical passages, leaving them in an uncertain state. The reformers had a biblical understanding that emphasized justification as a legal declaration. Now, we've had some weird things happening, and this is a good illustration, now that we're kind of coming off of the theological, let's talk a little practical. We've seen more presidential pardons probably in the past two, three weeks than in history. I mean, not together, but I think there's been 9,001 Thousands, okay. There's a lot of pardons happening. Probably, it doesn't bode well for our justice system if we have to have so many pardons, does it? Probably not. So, we're doing something wrong, right? But a presidential pardon removes the legal penalty. So, I'm going to compare justification by faith to a presidential pardon. They're different. A presidential pardon takes away the legal penalty. much like imputed righteousness removes the guilt. In both cases, the offender is not condemned or punished for their wrongdoing. The pardon is an act of grace, it's unearned. It mirrors a little bit unmerited grace, but the difference is this. A presidential pardon cancels the punishment but does not declare or make a person righteous, does it? It's neutral. It takes away the guilt of the conviction, but it doesn't place upon the individual the positive righteousness that Christ does. Of course, we're talking a legal thing and a spiritual thing. When a person is justified, it's not just that he says, I'm taking away your guilt, but he's saying, I'm adding Christ's righteousness to your account. That is a significant difference. It's kind of like the balloons that you put your static electricity. Do you like playing with static electricity? You never know if it's positive or negative. Electrostatic, it's possible for the balloon to be electrostatically neutral. But that's not what we're talking about. We want to have one that is either positive or negative. absence or presence of electrons, right? Very strong force. Electrostatic force is one of the strongest of the four forces. Interesting though, the illustration rings true with righteousness of Christ. It's not just that you're neutral, it's that he places upon you and he places upon me his righteousness. He doesn't change it from the inside, it's a legal transaction. We remember that Abraham believed God and God credited with him as righteousness. I'd like you to turn, if you will, over to Galatians chapter 3, for here we see that it's not just the justification of faith that is spoken of when the passage of Habakkuk is used. It's a continued faith. Justification is that initial thing that God does when one comes to Christ. You're justified. But the passage in Habakkuk is used extensively in other ways. It refers to not just a faith that is one time, but it refers to a living faith. Now I'm going to kind of move through this a little bit quickly, but I'd like to draw your attention to Galatians chapter 3 and verse 11. We'll read that first. because I'd like to get to the Hebrews passage, and so we're gonna kind of move through this one quickly. In Galatians chapter three in verse 11, we read the following. It says this, but that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for the just shall live by faith. There's that passage again. Now in Galatians three, if you look Back to the beginning of the chapter, look at chapter three, verse one, and if we look at the context of chapter three, we see this. It says, oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? This only I want to learn from you. Did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish, having begun in the spirit, Are you now being made perfect in the flesh? All right, so you see this context, it's coming up where the Galatian Church claimed to be justified by faith, by God's grace, grace through faith in Christ alone, and yet had returned to what we would often call a legalistic lifestyle, a law-based life. not a lawless life. We don't live lawlessly, but we don't live under the law of Moses and under the law in a way that we're motivated and constrained by its blessings and cursings. We live under the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. We live by faith. There is a difference. A person is not saved by grace, through faith, and justified, and then left only to their own merit and work. There are people who really believe that. It's a church of be nice. Just be a nice person. Be good. You and I are called to live not just, we're called not to live in a legalistic way, but in a way that is filled with faith. believing that God is the one who enables us by his grace for his glory to live a godly life. Again, anytime we start talking about being under the law or not under the law, we have to realize we're not under the law, but we're not without law. We are under God's grace, and we live by faith. All right? So let's move on to the final passage, having at least seen the passage in Galatians. I want you to turn to Hebrews chapter 10. All the way, this is the final reference of the just shall live by faith from the book of Habakkuk. So if we turn all the way over to Hebrews chapter 10 and we look at verses 36 through 39. Hebrews chapter 10 verses 36 through 39. So it takes us right up to the edge of the chapter on faith. Right? Remember Hebrews 11. What is Hebrews 11? It's the hall of faith. It's the hall of believers throughout history who have lived by faith. It's not strictly justified by faith. It's not necessarily what Paul talks about in Galatians where we're living in the immediate by faith. It's the continued enduring and persevering faith. So let me read this passage to you. Look at Hebrews 10, verses 36 through 39. It says, for you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he who is coming will come and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith. But if anyone draws back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul, all right? This is persevering and enduring faith. You're not just called to faith at the beginning, nor in the middle, but all the way to the end. Faith endures, it abides. True, saving, and genuine faith, by the way, will persevere. All the passages that you can see in the New Testament that tend to indicate maybe a person can fall away from true and genuine faith have to be put into the context of the bigger picture. You have to look at the passages which show the security of the believer in Christ. That is the case here. The apostle is saying, we need to be those who endure by faith. What does that mean? How do we live by faith? Let me read some verses for you. from the book of Hebrews, and then we'll finish on this. Living by faith means doing what those who lived in the hall of faith would do. If you look from Hebrews 11 and look at 32 to 40, and there's this anthology of what people did by faith. It's amazing. Let me read it for you as we close. Hebrews 11, verse 32, it says this, and what more shall I say For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and Barak, and Samson, and Jephthah, and also of David, and Samuel, and the prophets, who through faith, here we go, subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, Stopped the mouths of lions. Quenched the violence of fire. Escaped the edge of the sword. Out of weakness were made strong. Became valiant in battle. Turned to flight the armies of aliens. Women received their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection. Still others had a trial of mockings and scourgings. Yes, and of chains and imprisonment, they were stoned, they were sawn in two, Isaiah, were tempted, were slain with a sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world is not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains and dens and caves of the earth, and all these, listen, having obtained a good testimony through faith, through faith. did not receive the promise that we have in Christ ultimately. God having, verse 40, provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us. The principle, the beauty of the passage of faith is that the just are justified by faith. They live by faith in terms of sanctification and they endure their whole life by faith in God. There's this active, engaged faith. We never stop believing, we never stop trusting, we never stop hoping in the Lord. If somebody says to you, you know what, I said a word years ago, I believed in Christ, but I don't really believe now. What do you do with that? That's not true saving faith, right? Saving faith, even in its infancy, it may be just the minutest thing, it endures. Sometimes we're so broken, right? We're broken, but there's a smidgen of faith. You're taking hold of God, even in the midst of the deepest, darkest trials, but you still have him. He's still there. Look it, it wasn't roses, was it? The hall of faith, all those statements? There were people who were sawn in two by faith. How does that happen? They trusted the Lord, right? It's not all a bed of roses, but God is there and he's faithful. He loves us with that everlasting love. When a person is justified by faith in Christ, that's not something that is removed. It's not something that comes and goes. It's there when God puts His righteousness, the righteousness of Christ onto your account. That's something that stays, stays with you. I trust and I hope that you're a person of faith. I trust that, I hope. You know, you can't believe in God until you have come to the cross of Christ. You can't say I'm a person of faith until you come to him by repentance and you trust him for his righteousness. You can't claim it. You can't claim it until you've trusted in him. He does a powerful work in us. There's no going back, is there? We have the greatest blessing in this life, being believers in Christ. We are so blessed. Let's go to the Lord in prayer as we finish this day. Father, thank you for your holy word. the pathway of faith, this hall of faith that starts all the way through the scriptures and culminates in such great works. Thank you, Lord, for your work in our lives. Help us to live each day as we go our way, as we do our jobs, as we work and live. Let us live by faith for you, holding fast to your words. Thank you for your people. We do have great love for one another, and we thank you for this work here at Berean, and we just pray that we would encourage one another as the service closes, lifting each other up in love and good deeds, and we give you praise and glory in Jesus' name, amen.