IDEA: "The just shall live by faith" is a principle, not a rule.
TEXT: "I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart, and watch to see what He will say to me and what I will answer when I am corrected. Then the Lord answered me and said, 'Write the vision and make it plain on tablets 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 his faith' "(Habakkuk 2:1-4).
PURPOSE: To help listeners appropriate in their lives the principle that the righteous live by faith.
What is the difference between a principle and a rule?
Is "drive on the right side of the road" a principle or a rule?
What principle lies behind it?
I. Sometimes when a writer in the New Testament quotes a writer in the Old Testament, it can seem like a misuse of the original writer's meaning.
In the Old Testament book of Habakkuk there is a declaration that God makes to the prophet (2:1-4). It seems more like an insertion into a flow of thought: "The righteous will live by his faith" (or "His faithfulness").
What is the passage talking about?
What is the "revelation" in the passage?
Why does the righteous live by his faith in this situation?
In the New Testament the writer to the Hebrews quotes that passage from Habakkuk but changes it.
The Old Testament has the emphasis on the just person of God living by faith in God's faithfulness to His covenant with the nation. In Hebrews the just person lives by his own faith and loyalty.
Habakkuk looks forward to God's judgment, but in Hebrews, Christians look forward to Christ's second coming.
The righteous person will be preserved in life by loyalty and faith in God.
II. The principle of how the righteous person lives by faith emerges as the headline for Hebrews 11.
Both focus on a promise made by God. Faith is always faith in a promise made by God.
Both have no tangible evidence that what is promised will actually come to pass.
Both will gain a reward for their trust.