Making It By Faith

"How are we going to make it?" Have you ever asked yourself that question? Maybe in the middle of a chaotic season, or a particularly gruelling time of suffering. Maybe as you felt your finances or your health stretching a bit too thin. You just couldn't see to the other side.

How are we going to make it?

I think that's the kind of question that Habakkuk the prophet would have asked, and did ask, as he struggled with deep and serious questions.

Last week we began to hear from the book written by this prophet who lived during the last years of the kingdom of Judah.

They were dark days, and he was surrounded by violence and wickedness everywhere he turned, and God didn't seem to be doing anything about it. And so Habakkuk brought his complaint to the Lord. And God answered him by telling him that He had seen everything Habakkuk had seen, and he was already in the process of sending the Babylonians against Judah to bring justice and judgement.

Habakkuk's Second Complaint

But Habakkuk isn't so sure he likes the sound of this answer. These Babylonians sound absolutely vicious. Which leaves Habakkuk with two problems. The first problem is that it sounds like Judah is finished. If the Babylonians are as bad as God says they are, then Judah isn't just going to be punished—its going to be obliterated.

It's kind of like complaining to your landlord that you have a mouse problem, and their response is to come burn the whole place down.

The second problem is that these Babylonians sound even worse than the people Habakkuk complained about first. Dealing with sinners by sending even worse sinners against them doesn't answer his basic question of why God lets evil people get away with their wickedness.

If there was a criminal breaking in to your house, and you called the police, and instead of sending a squad car, they unlock an even worse criminal and send him over.

So Habakkuk has problems with God's answer. He's still left wondering how long things can go on like they are. He's still left wondering how they're going to make it.

But what does he do with these questions? He does the exact same thing we saw him do last week: he brings them directly to the Lord, which is what we see here in today's passage in verses 12 and following. This is Habakkuk's second complaint.

The First Problem: Judah's Survival

And like we saw, his complaint has two parts. In verse 12 he speaks to God about his first problem, the bare fact of Judah's survival. And what we see him doing here is not so much complaining to God as much as speaking to God to reassure himself that Judah is not going to be totally destroyed by the Babylonians.

He says, "Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One?" These words are so beautiful in that they point to Habakkuk's very personal relationship with the Lord. The Babylonians' own might was their god, but the Lord—Yahweh—is Habakkuk's God. He is not just the Holy One, He is Habakkuk's Holy One.

By using God's personal name—Yahweh, shown in your Bibles by the all-caps "Lord,"—Habakkuk addresses the covenant God who made covenant promises to Abraham and his offspring. By pointing to the fact that God is from everlasting, Habakkuk is reminding himself of the fact that the Babylonians are just a blip, a temporary reality set against the backdrop of an eternal, promise-keeping God.

What does that mean? It means "We shall not die," as he says next. He's reassuring himself that the Babylonian invasion doesn't mean the total destruction of God's people. Instead, they are just a temporary judgement and correction for God's sinful people, established by the Rock, as he calls God in verse 12—the eternal, permanent safe place for God's people.

So this is how Habakkuk deals with the first problem, the problem of Judah's survival. God, the eternal one, is not going to let His ancient promises be turned aside by the new kids on the block. He's going to use Babylon to judge his people, but not erase them from history.

The Second Problem: Dirty Hands from Dirty Tools

But that brings us to the second problem. How can God do even that? If Judah is such a wicked nation, how does it make sense for God to use an even more wicked nation to deal with them? How can a holy God find any purpose for "guilty men, whose own might is their god" like we read in verse 11?

And that's the main thrust of Habakkuk's complaint here in verses 13 and following. “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?” (Habakkuk 1:13).

"God, you're holy and pure," he's saying. "How can you be okay with Judah being swallowed up by a nation even worse than we are?"

In verses 14 and following, he compares the whole thing to a perverse fishing trip. God has made people as clueless and powerless before Babylon as fish are before a fisherman. Helplessly they are hooked and netted by the greedy Babylon, who gives no credit to the God of heaven. Instead, "He sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his dragnet."

Habakkuk is making a parody of Babylon, who made idols to represent their own might and power and worshipped them as if they were real gods. They praise their own strength while they live in luxury off of the plunder of the nations.

And is God going to let this keep on happening? Verse 17: “Is he then to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever?” (Habakkuk 1:17).

So notice how the conversation has progressed. Habakkuk started by complaining about Judah's sin. When are you going to deal with them? God's answer: I'm sending Babylon to deal with them. Habakkuk is now saying: you haven't really solved anything, because Babylon is even worse. When are you going to deal with them?

And he thinks he's made a pretty good case here. He thinks he deserves an answer. Look at how confident he sounds in verse 1 of chapter 2: “I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint” (Habakkuk 2:1).

In the ancient world, if you wanted to know what was going on in the world, you didn't open up the news app or check your email. You sent the watchman up to the watchtower to look for a runner bringing news from afar.

And that's what Habakkuk is picturing himself as doing here. He's dispatched a message to God, and now he's taken his stand to look for the reply—which he expects God to send him.

We can't help but notice he sounds a little over-confident here. He sounds a little demanding. He sounds like he might think that God owes him a response to his "gotcha" questions.

Yahweh's Response

And we're going to see how the Lord adjusted Habakkuk's attitude. But initially, in a straightforward way, we should see that God does answer Him. Verse 2: "And the Lord answered me." We don't know how long he waited, but God responded. What does God tell him?

“Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it” (Habakkuk 2:2).

In other words, Habakkuk is not just getting a personal or a temporary answer to his question. This is going to be written down—so others can read it—on tablets, which were made to last. Indeed, we still have some tablets from the ancient world in existence today.

So God is basically saying, "Write this down, this is important."

Next, God assures Habakkuk that what he writes down is going to happen—just not right away. “For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay” (Habakkuk 2:3).

God's timing might not be Habakkuk's timing, but he shouldn't interpret slowness as apathy. This is going to happen. God waits, but not forever.

And then the vision itself begins: "Behold!" (verse 4). This is the message that Habakkuk was to write. And what it focuses on, at least at the beginning, is a description of the proud and sinful people that Habakkuk is so worried about.

We read about one whose soul is puffed up, which is quite a visual picture of someone proud and arrogant. The one other time this word is used in the Old Testament, it speaks about the Israelites who proudly presumed to go into the promised land even though God had told them He wouldn't be with them (Numbers 14:44).

The wicked one has a soul that is not upright. In verse 5, he is betrayed by the wine that he craves, which could also be a reference to the wealth that he gathers through his sin. This one's greed is like the grave—never satisfied. He scoops up nations and peoples, one after the other, and it's never enough. He always wants more.

But, it doesn't go on forever. The same nations that the Babylonians tried to gobble up are going to turn around and mock them when they experience their own downfall.

That's what we get in verses 6 and following—a string of judgements against Babylon which show that their days are numbered. Spoiler alert: after they have been used by God to discipline His people, God is going to judge them.

So let's review God's basic message here. Habakkuk wonders, how can you judge your sinful people at the hands of an even more sinful people? And the Lord says to him: wait. Be patient. I see how wicked these people are. I haven't missed anything. I'm not okay with their sin. And I'm going to judge them. Nobody is getting away with anything.

By Faith

Paying attention to how God responds to Habakkuk helps us make sense of an all-important part of verse 4 that we haven't paid too much attention to yet. Let's read verse 4 again completely: ““Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4).

"The righteous shall live by his faith." This is an incredible phrase but not an easy one to understand, and there are some questions that we need to answer in order to understand it properly.

First, what do these words mean? And second, what are these words doing here in this passage? And we're going to see that these questions are related, but still we need to deal with them one at a time.

a. What Do These Words Mean?

Let's start with the first question. What do these words mean? Let's start by considering the "righteous." This is the person in right standing with God. They have a righteous status, and they have been given this status because they are in a right relationship with God.

And righteous person is going to live—literally live, survive, thrive—by their faith. Now this is where we need to pause and think about what this word means. If you have an ESV Bible, you're going to see a little note there beside the word "faith" that says "Or faithfulness."

Most English Bibles do that—they translate this word as "faith" but put a little note that says "or faithfulness." The NIV is one of the few that goes ahead and just translates it as "faithfulness"—"but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness" (Hab 2:4b, NIV).

And here's why. The word used here in Hebrew means, and is translated as, "faithfulness" almost every other time it's used in the Old Testament. And that is the basic meaning of the word. Faithful, or steadfast, or consistent. That's what the word means.

Much of the time, when used in relation to God, the word speaks about His faithfulness to His covenant people. Psalm 100:5 is one example among many: “For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations” (Psalm 100:5).

God is faithful—to his people, to His promises.

When the word is used of people, very often it speaks about people being faithful in a certain activity. Like being faithful in work, or faithful in duties, or faithful to do or say the right thing.

b. Why Are They Here?

This is what the words means. And if that's true, we need to ask: what's going on here in Habakkuk 2:4? "The righteous shall live by his faithfulness"? Why is this phrase here? What is this phrase doing here in this passage?

Like we saw earlier, this passage flows pretty well without these words. It's just a running description of the wicked people Habakkuk was worried about. Does it not seem a little curious why, in the middle of all of that, God would make this random comment about how a righteous person lives?

What's the point of saying that? How does that actually contribute to God's argument here?

And to answer that question I want us to notice one thing, and ask one further question. First, notice how Habakkuk himself is so deeply involved in this prophecy. He's not just passively receiving a message. He's interacting with God—lamenting, questioning, maybe even demanding. And we're going to see in chapter 3 how he is humbled and ends in a place of trust and confidence.

God is not just speaking through Habakkuk as a blank mouthpiece. God is interacting with Habakkuk as a man, teaching him how to deal with all of these questions on his heart.

So notice that. Next ask, when it says that the righteous one lives by his faithfulness, we wonder—faithfulness in what? The word means steadfastness, faithfulness, consistency. In what? What are the righteous faithful in? What are they consistent in?

And here's how I think we should put these pieces together here: in this whole book, God is teaching Habakkuk to trust him.

Back in chapter 1, Habakkuk brought his questions, and God told him that the answer to his question was already in motion. Here in verse 3 he tells Habakkuk to be patient and wait for this vision to come true. And the lesson is learned when, in chapter 3, Habakkuk says he's going to rejoice in God even when everything else is taken away form him.

Habakkuk is learning to trust. So when God says that the righteous shall live by his faithfulness, in the context of this book, that speaks about faithful trust. Steadfast reliance on God. Consistently choosing to believe God's version of the story instead of our own confused perspective.

Which is why the word "faith" is actually a fine translation here. It gets at the sense of what's actually going on. It's talking about steadfast trust.

And this is how righteous Habakkuk is going to make it—survive, and even thrive—through these evil days he was living in. Violence all around him, an impending invasion, and a head full of questions for what in the world God is doing. "We shall not die" he said back in chapter 1. Yes, but how shall he live?

By remaining steadfast in his confidence in the Lord. By waiting for the vision to be fulfilled in the right time. By faith, in other words. As one author summed this up, "The righteous person trusts God in the darkest of times, holding fast to the conviction that God’s promises will be fulfilled" (Elmer Martens in D. A. Carson, ed., NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2018), 1615.)

The alternative is to join the Babylonians in their puffed-up arrogance. The Babylonians trusted in their own strength. And the temptation before Habakkuk, or any of his readers, would be to basically act the same by trusting in their own sense of what's going on instead of trusting in the living God.

That's why the way verse 4 is written is so important. It says "his soul is puffed up," without saying whose soul. Sure, it's probably describing the Babylonians, but it could be anybody. If the shoe fits, it could even be Habakkuk or his readers. Because in the end, there are only two ways of life in this world. The puffed-up pride of self-reliance, or the patient trust of the righteous.

And in a day when it seems like the puffed-up proud are going to swallow everything in their path, the righteous will live—survive, even thrive—through their steadfast confidence that God is eventually going to do everything He said He would do.

This is how they're going to make it. They're going to live by faith.

Paul

Now, when we put the pieces together and understand this passage in this way, it really helps us. And one of the ways that it really helps us is by helping us understand how the Apostle Paul made use of this verse in his writings.

If Habakkuk 2:4 felt familiar at all, it might be because Paul quoted it twice—in Romans 1, and in Galatians 3.

And both times, Paul takes these words and applies them to the theme of our salvation. Let's take a look first at Romans 1.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith’” (Romans 1:16–17).

And then Galatians 3: “Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for ‘The righteous shall live by faith’” (Galatians 3:11).

In both of these passages, Paul is reflecting on how we become righteous—how we gain a right status—before God. And he says that we become righteous by faith. God counts us righteous, or justifies us, by faith. And as proof of this, he quotes Habakkuk 2:4: "The righteous shall life by faith."

And at this point, some students of the Bible accuse Paul of taking Scripture out of context. They'll say that what he's doing with the passage is something totally different from what Habakkuk was intending when he first wrote these words.

And maybe you're wondering the same thing. Habakkuk seems to be talking about how to make it through a dark and confusing season, and Paul seems to be talking about how to become a Christian, and how does this even connect?

I want to suggest—and I'm definitely not the first person to make this suggestion—that Paul understood Habakkuk perfectly.

See, what Paul was arguing against in both of these letters is the idea that we can achieve or attain salvation by our own works.

“For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight” he said in Romans 3:20. “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse” says Galatians 3:10.

Trusting in ourselves that we are righteous, that we have the resources, goodness, or capabilities to make it in to God's good books—that will never get us saved.

The only way to be justified is to rely on God. To trust in Him to save us. To trust in Christ to keep His promises to us.

And that's exactly the posture that Habakkuk is describing here in our passage today. These verses call us to reject self-confidence, and embrace an unwavering confidence that God is going to do all that He promised for the good of His people.

So Paul is taking Habakkuk's point and applying it to our salvation in Jesus Christ, but it's the same point. The same posture. The same trust.

Because the righteous live by faith. The righteous are justified by faith. The righteous become righteous in the first place by faith. And the righteous make it through soul-crushing troubles by faith.

Us

And all of this brings us to some very important and very encouraging ways that this passage speaks right to you and me today.

Let's start with where we just were: the issue of our salvation and our status before God. How are you going to make it when faced with the impossible mountain of your own sin and the demands of God's righteous standards? How are you going to make it with all of the dirt that Satan has on you from watching you closely every minute of your life? How are you going to make it when you stand before God to give an account for everything you've done and every idle word that you've ever spoken?

I hope you can see how foolish is the path of puffed-up pride, the path that thinks that, maybe with a bit of help here and there, we can ever be good enough in God's eyes.

The only way that we're ever going to make is by trust in God's promise to save all who call upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's good news we need to hear this morning, if you're hearing this for the first time, or hearing this for the 10,000th time.

See, even in a church there can lurk the dark spectre of self-righteousness. I grew up going to church and, even as a child, it was really easy for me to believe that being in church, belonging to a Christian home, made me better than other people and made me good in God's eyes.

And even if you didn't grow up going to church, you're in one now, and Satan really, really wants you to believe that just being here makes you better than other people and means you'll go to heaven when you die.

And he wants you to believe that because he knows it's wrong. He knows that, as Keith Green said famously, going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to MacDonalds makes you a hamburger.

Whoever you are, however squeaky-clean or mucky your track record is, our only hope this morning is that Jesus died and rose again and promised to save all those who come to him in faith.

And so we come like Habakkuk needed to come, forsaking our self-confidence and not wavering from our hope in God to keep those promises.

We live by faith in other ways, too. Maybe your life feels like a bit of a Babylonian invasion right now, and you can't figure out how God is going to work any of this out for good, let alone all of it. You can't see how you're going to make it.

Maybe you're wrestling with doubts about how God could love you, or how God can even be real given the things you've seen or experienced or been taught.

And friends, the way you make it is by steadfast trust. As I have gotten older and the attacks on my faith have gotten more and more sophisticated, I've found more and more comfort in Jesus' words that unless we turn and become like children, we'll never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 18:3).

Children trust their dad, even when it doesn't make sense to them.

And that part of me that wants to think, "It's gotta be more complicated than that. 'Just trust' seems too simplistic"—well, that's the puffed-up, not-upright voice of arrogance that must be silenced.

The righteous shall live by his faith. We make it through whatever we're going through by steadfast confidence in God and His promises.

A final word: maybe this doesn't sounds like very good news to you this morning. Because maybe you know yourself and you know that steadfast, faithful trust isn't something you can come up with very easily.

You read about Abraham—“No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised” (Romans 4:20–21)—and you think, "Ya, that's not me. My faith is like shifting sand, changed by every wave."

And that's where we can remember the good news that even the faith to believe is itself a gift from the God who saves.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this"—which includes the faith itself—"is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).

So cry out to God today for the faith to believe His promises. Receive the gift. And live by faith in His promises to us.

Be encouraged that He kept His promises through Habakkuk. The people of God were not destroyed. But have you ever met a Babylonian?

Think about that, brothers and sisters: this situation we're in today, where people all around the world are gathering in the name of the Jewish Messiah to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with not a Babylonian in sight—this seemed humanly impossible in Habakkuk's day. But God did it. And He's going to do it again when He sends Jesus to deliver us finally and fully and bring us safely into His kingdom.

We can trust Him. We can live by faith.